text:
Loss of quality in after effects 3D layer
I have a 2D image layer that looks great as a 2D layer. Both .png and .eps files are (near) pixel perfect. However when I convert the layer to 3D, there is a massive loss in quality. Is there a setting somewhere that can improve the quality of the video?

2D

3D

What happens when you render it losslessly? Does it still look like that?

It looks a bit better than RAM preview, but there's still some ugly anti-aliasing. Trouble is, I need a .png sequence, which looks terrible when rendered.

Unless you need it make sure you are using the Classic 3D rendering mode and not the "Ray-Traced 3D" renderer. You can see and change the renderer in the top right corner of your comp view or just go into the composition settings menu through the top menu bar.
If you are in need of using the RayTraced 3D renderer click on the options menu and increase the quality from 3 (standard) to a higher value like 6 or 8 and see if that fixes your issue.
You may also change your AntiAliasing mdoe to cubic instead of box.
Also make sure your preview quality is not set to fast draft but to adaptive or final quality.


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How to start making videos
I want to learn to make videos like this one, where should I start? And what tools I can use?

There are many different ways to accomplish this. You will have to pick an animation software like Adobe After Effects. There are many different 2D animation programs, all of which do certain things better and other things worse than the alternatives. Which you pick depends on your preferences and what you want to accomplish in detail. I would recommend After Effects, since it is very multilateral, however you should take a look at this list to get an overview and decide by yourself.
Another option is to start with 3D animation software, in this case you could start with Blender (freeware and relatively easy to learn), Cinema 4D (expensive and powerful) or Maya (free for students and used for professional works), or chose a program from this list.
I have to warn you though: 2D and 3D animation is very difficult. It will most likely take some time and effort for you to be able to create videos like the one you linked.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Repeat a clip down entire timeline
Is there a better way to take a short video loop (in my case a video watermark) and duplicate it again and again down the full length of my sequence than my current workflow?
Current Workflow

Place the clip in the sequence
Hold Alt down and drag a copy down the timeline
Select the new copy and snap it back against the first one
Select both clips
Holding Alt, drag a new copy of them down the line
Select all clips and repeat step 5.
Repeat 5 & 6 until the clip is looped down the full length of the sequence.

Any insight into a faster solution would be MUCH appreciated!

This is a fast way to copy the clips in succession.

Copy the video clip CMD/CTRL + C
Target ONLY the track that the loop will be on
Then swiftly insert it multiple times by just holding down CMD/CTRL and pressing V multiple times in a row

I should have thought of that! It's MUCH faster than what I've been doing. Thanks a million, I edited the question a little to make it clearer.

Accepted, it certainly is clearer that way ^_^

Building on the cut/paste workflow. You could create the clip in AfterEffects and make it very long. Then just dynamic link to your project.
This way at least -every time you need to use it- you don't have to copy/paste over again. Just drop the one clip and size to need. Also can be useful if you need a varying opacity through the clip, since you don't have to adjust a bunch of clips separately.

Not a bad idea, except that for my situation, I'm doing a different clip most of the time, so it would actually take longer.

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


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Does raising the framerate while not changing the bitrate result in quality loss?
AFAIK, the bitrate is the number of bits per second. So let's say I have two videos, both using the same codec, bitrate settings and resolution. If the first one has a framerate of 25fps, but the second one runs at 50fps, does that mean that the second one will have a drastically lower quality since the available bits for each second of the video have to be divided amongst twice as much frames?
Or is this effect diminished by motion compensation (e.g. by having more P-frames and less I-frames) or something like that?

One thing you may want to make sure is that you’re setting keyframe and other intervals in units of seconds instead of frames. That way you don’t insert more I/keyframes than normal and gets to take advantage of motion compensation better. You might also want to check your B frame count settings and scale that with fps

If the result of increasing the frame rate is that more pixels are displayed per second, then yes, keeping the bit rate the same will almost certainly mean a loss in overall quality. Not all such losses are objectionable or even necessarily noticeable. For example, if the bit rate is 30 Mb/s and you reduce it to 15 Mb/s, probably not many people would notice.

What do you mean by "if"? Do you not know exactly if this is as a matter of fact the case or are there scenarios in which this rule does not apply?
Of course you're right saying that bitrate reduction will be hardly noticeable if you have a high bitrate, in this case this is a somewhat theoretical question ... however, it might make an actual difference when you have a low bitrate to begin with.

The only scenario where this wouldn't apply is that you decrease the resolution of your video according to the increase in fps. In any other case increasing the frame rate without increasing the bit-rate will decrease the maximum information available for each frame e.g. decreasing quality. How much it decreases totally depends on your source material and bit-rate.

Codecs today are indeed smart and you don't need to double the bitrate when you double the frame rate but I recommend at least increasing it by about a third of the original value (given that the original value wasn't too much already)

@Gin-San - My 'if' was to cover the case where you encode 50i vs 25p, for example. It might have been clearer to just say that whenever the pixel rate increases, you get lower quality from the same bit rate. As the Professor points out, the relationship isn't linear -- modern codecs deal well with the case where added frames are substantially similar.

Keep in mind that temporal quality is also a factor here though.  Doubling the frame rate is substantially less lowering of overall quality than halving the bitrate since our eyes can only take in so much information so quickly and blending between frames will result in recovering a lot of the loss per frame.  (Hence why the bitrate doesn't have to double.)

This is a complicated question that doesn't have an exact answer.  In general, yes, the quality will probably be lower but the higher frame rate is higher "quality" to begin with.
With video, you have to remember that temporal information is part of the quality.  If you double the frame rate, the quality of each individual frame will go down, but you will see twice as many of them and the impact of things like noise can average out amongst the frames.
Additionally, modern compression works by comparing one frame to neighboring frames.  When you increase the frame rate, the amount of change between frames is reduced, so the amount of data needed to store the change is also reduced, since less changes between frames.
Purely theoretically, what most matters in terms of quality is the amount of information being put in front of our eyes over time, so it may even be theoretically possible to make a higher frame rate version of a video that is higher overall quality at the same bitrate as a lower frame rate version.
With a hypothetical perfect encoding and compression system, the rate of meaningful information presented to our hypothetical perfect eyes per second is what determines quality.  The problem is that such hypothetical don't exist.  Our eyes are unpredictably lossy in terms of what information they pay attention to over time, so in some cases higher frame rate provides a bigger boost in quality than others.  Similarly, compression and encoding isn't perfect either, so some types of content require more effort to encode and compress, with more overhead, and others produce more noise that is best accounted for through higher frame rates, while others may require lower frame rates but higher detail per frame.
Practically, the overhead of storing parts of the frame that can't compress easily generally overcome the advantages of the elevated frame rate resulting in a loss of quality when doubling frame rate without increasing bit rate, but it isn't anywhere near as significant of a quality loss as you would get if you cut the bitrate in half.
Additionally, the quality loss of the compressed version over the original is much higher for the higher frame rate, even if the relative quality between the lower and higher frame rate versions are much closer (since the lower frame rate video was much lower quality to begin with).
You only need to increase the bitrate enough to make up for the overhead lost by inefficiencies in the encoding and compression of the extra frame data.  As ProfessorSparkles pointed out, somewhere around 1/3 extra bitrate is probably a decent starting point for figuring out what you need to maintain subjective quality, but it will vary a lot based on the video content you are encoding and the codecs and data rates being used.

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


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Youtube 720p video has more MB than 1080p
I watched a video and downloaded with idm in 720p. I don't like the resolution and I decided to download 1080p. But I saw 720p is nearly 21 MB but 1080p is 10 MB. And I opened the video(1080p) I saw it is better than 720p. Why?

Maybe the 2 files are just using different compression algorithms...?

Maybe. But the in these series all videos are like that

How long is the video?  21MB is very small, even for a 720P Video, let alone 10MB for a 1080p.  It sounds like maybe there are some quality issues going on with the source.

For example this video link   one of those videos which I said

I tried this with the video provided in the comment.
The reason why the 1080p video is smaller is because it has a lower bit-rate (327 vs. ~207 Kbps). In the case of this type of content its likely that the bit-rate for the 720p version is too high. Same for the audio the 1080p version has 96 Kbps and the 720p version has 144-155 Kbps.
A possible reason why this is the case, is how YouTube handles 720p and 1080p video. Unlike the 720p stream the 1080p stream isn't truly constant in it's bit-rate. For 1080p YouTube uses a protocol called "DASH" which adapts the bitrate of the video on the fly to meet the bandwidth constrains of the user which might change during streaming. You get lots of video bits from the server which might differ in bit-rate depending on your current connection. So if you download the same video on a very slow connection it will probably be even smaller.
In this case it saved you bandwidth while having better quality, in other cases the 1080p video could actually look worse than the 720p video, though DASH is pretty smart so usually you will probably end up with a better looking 1080p.


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How to make a video presentation with the possibility to go to the next or the previous "video-slide"?
I've tried to make a Power Point presentation but I've to many videos and rendering inside so the presentation doesn't have a good portability and continuity. I would like to make directly a video, the problem is that in a video I can't go to the next or the previous slide (that in this case can be a piece of video or a conventional "static" slide with text...) like in a presentation. What software or tool can I use to have this feature in a video. Best solution would be: use the same command (right/left arrow, mouse click...) of the PP presentation to go to the next or previous video slide.

I recently saw this page:
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/08/building-interactive-html5-videos/
Basically it uses the track element within the video element to make clickable "skip points" in the video. Javascript and html5 (with video) are pretty much amazing these days and with a little bit of experimentation I am sure you can get what you want. (Like on skip event pause the video if playing etc.)
Here is the relevant code from that page modded to your needs:
  <video width="480" height="204" poster="assets/sintel.jpg">
    <source src="q1fx20VZ-kNspJqnJ.mp4" type="video/mp4">
    <source src="q1fx20VZ-27m5HpIu.webm" type="video/webm">
    <track src="assets/chapters.vtt" kind="chapters" default>
  </video>

The contents of the vtt file look like this:
WEBVTT

1
00:00:00.000 --> 00:01:42.000
Opening credits

2
00:01:42.000 --> 00:04:44.000
A dangerous quest

3
00:04:44.000 --> 00:05:50.000
The attack

4
00:05:50.000 --> 00:08:24.000
In pursuit

5
00:08:24.000 --> 00:10:13.000
Cave Fight

6
00:10:13.000 --> 00:12:24.000
Eye to eye

7
00:12:24.000 --> 00:14:48.000
Ending Credits

Video is not directly going to handle your needs. What you need is real presentation software. Power Point is a giant joke in the industry because it is horrible. Media sequencers and real presentation software are able to deal with your situation by playing back images, video, audio and text at will.
I mostly use software designed for churches for this kind of thing so I'm most familiar with products like MediaShout and ProPresenter. There are also similar products that don't have the church specific functionality, but these packages also handle the general cases well.
Basically you give it an order of file playback and configure your transitions and the software handles playing it back when you advance the "slide".
As far as free options, you could probably use something like vlc, though I'm not sure if you could get rid of the on screen display and it won't be as easy as professional solutions.

What is "church specific functionality"?

@denjello - things like the easy ability to drop in Bible verses or lyrics for songs from libraries built in to the program.  They are features that are nice to have for media sequencing for church related events, but not helpful outside of that context.  That said, they are still relatively full featured sequencers in their own right and could be used generically.

@ AJ Henderson: Cool. Didn't know about that - is it something that can be leveraged with the drupal panopoly openchurch distro?

@denjello - no idea, don't think so.


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gource and ffmpeg reduce video size
I try to create video with gource. I succeed with the following command line:
gource $LOG_FILE --log-format custom --stop-at-end --caption-file ${FILENAME}_captions.log --caption-duration 3 --title $TITLE --seconds-per-day 0.7 --auto-skip-seconds 1 --date-format\
 "%d/%m/%y" --hide "mouse,progress" --user-scale 0.6 --caption-size 20 -1380x950 -o - | ffmpeg -y -r 60 -f image2pipe -vcodec ppm -i - -vcodec libx264 -preset ultrafast -pix_fmt yuv420\
p -crf 1 -threads 4 -bf 0 $FILENAME.mp4

But the video are too big, 9Go for 4 min. How can I reduce the size with ffmpeg?
I use Fedora.

Others answers already addressed your -crf 1, but -bf 0 makes little sense.  x264 only uses B frames when they will help overall quality.  If you need compat with ancient hardware players, use -profile baseline.  (One case where x264's b-frame decisions aren't optimal (or weren't in 2009?) is a series of not-very-similar still pictures, where lots of I macroblocks are needed: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=145005)

Also, x264 auto-detects how many threads to use.  Only use -threads if you want it not to saturate all your CPUs.  (like if gource needs significant CPU time?)

-preset
Use the slowest preset that is fast enough that it does not drop frames. You can see if ffmpeg is dropping frames in the console output (if I recall correctly). Presets are: ultrafast, superfast, veryfast, faster, fast, medium, slow, slower, veryslow.
-crf
Use the highest -crf value that still provides an acceptable quality level. Range is 0-51. 0 is lossless, 18 is generally considered to be visually lossless or nearly so, 23 is default, and 51 is worst quality. Using a value of 1 will likely result in a huge file.
Also see:

FFmpeg H.264 Video Encoding Guide

Thanks a lot for the same input file the initial size was 1.3Go and now only 39Mo.

ultrafast for anything but lossless is a bad idea.  -preset superfast -x264-params cabac=0 is MUCH better quality per bitrate (RD), and almost as fast.

You specify a preset and a quality value at the same time and by that overriding the preset.
I would also recommend you don't encode with ffmpeg while capturing as this would be pretty slow on most PCs.
The "error" in your ffmpeg commandline is the option -crf 1. CRF is a quality setting of x264 and the lower the value the higher the bitrate of the video will be. Setting it to 1 will make the video pretty much lossless. Just leave that command out and maybe use a preset like medium or slow and not ultrafast like you have right now to get a decent quality.


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Console Audio and Commentary Capture - Is it possible to capture both?
I've been scouring google to see if it's possible to record gameplay audio for consoles as well as live commentary from a microphone or headset. Most of what I come across, from either forums or product FAQs say that it's possible to do one but not both. On PCs, it's easy, but on consoles you can only do one. Or so I'm told.
However, I see quite a few videos on Youtube from consoles with both game audio and live commentary. So it must be possible.
Can anyone tell me how how it's possible to do both on a console? I know nothing about video editing and production so I'm curious what devices and programs are needed to accomplish this. Also, is it possible to record the console audio and live commentary as two separate tracks?
Thank you for your time! I appreciate any help.

As I understand it you want to record and not stream your gameplay live via twitch or other live streaming services?
In that case you just record your game video and audio with your desired method (f.e. a PC capture card) and then you just record you voice at the same time with your PC/Laptop/Smartphones microphone input. When you are done recording you just sync your commentary audio file with your game footage later on using a video editor.
Something that could help to sync game footage and commentary would be to record a small bit of the game audio with your microphone over your speakers before starting your commentary, then you can easily sync your commentary by alligning it with the game audio manually. Thats how you usually sync multiple audio sources the cheap way when filming, another method would be to use a mixer like AJ Henderson suggested which will keep everything in sync for you but also costs money.
Popular video editors are Adobe Premiere and Apple Final Cut. A good free editor would be Lightworks.

Thank you! You both had great input but this is definitely what I was looking for.

There are numerous ways to handle this and none are particularly difficult, though some are mildly technical.  The most direct is through use of a mixer or a capture device with multiple audio inputs.  Most input devices only take a single stereo audio stream to go with the video input, so without buying a specialized capture device, the most promising way to do it live is with a mixer.
To use a mixer, you would branch off the audio from the video, feed the audio from the console in to the mixer while also feeding a microphone in to the mixer for commentary.  The output of the mixer (most likely a tape out) would then go to the audio input for the capture device.
Mixers add a decent amount of cost in most cases though, so if you want to avoid that, the easiest way is to dub after the fact.  You can record the video from the console directly and then record a separate audio track once you have the video edited however you want it.  The nice things about this approach is that it has no additional cost, allows you to fine tune your commentary to your final video, and allows you to substitute different commentary tracks over the same gameplay footage.

So a mixer is what they are using for console audio with live commentary? I know what capture devices they are using, and I know they do not support live commentary. So.. it just keeps me wondering how they're doing it.

@Barry - it is the highest end solution for live stuff, though a multi-channel audio interface could work as well, but might have sync issues (but with a voice over, such issues would be difficult to notice).


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scale an image inside a mask
Pretty new to after effects.
I was wondering if anyone could tell me how to scale an image contained inside a mask.
Similar to photoshop. In Photoshop you create a mask and if you want to scale the image you simply unlink the mask and scale your image.
Can this be done in after effects?
This is what I have going on.

Video playing in background
Created a new image layer in the bottom right position of the video to show a more in-depth example of what the person in the video is talking about.
Want to add a scale effect to the image layer contained in the mask

When I try and scale the image it scales the mask. I only want the image to scale inside the mask.
Any help would be appreciated.

After some serious Google time I found a solution.
Here is the link, but just in case is gets removed this is what they said to do.
You want to use a track matte.
Create a mask on a solid layer that lies on top of the layer you want to cut out. Then click on the TrkMatte dropdown menu on your footage layer, select Alpha Matte.
Here's the layer order for you:

Masked solid
Your footage / image - Apply Track matte and apply Alpha Matte
Background (if used)

Now you can move your footage layer around and the mask won't move.
This worked like a charm.
If anyone has any better solutions, please let me know.

What you can do if you don't want to animate your layer unlinked from your mask (in that case use a track matte like you found out already), is to create a quick dummy layer like a solid, cut the mask(s) from your source layer and paste it to the dummy, scale the source layer and paste back the masks, they will keep their global position and scale throughout this process.
Track mattes are nice but they can clutter your composition quite a bit if you have a lot layers with masks and don't need the mask to be independent of your layer or actually don't even want them to be independent and just want to adjust the scales once.

You could also pre-comp the second smaller layer, then apply the scale inside the comp.
Getting the timing on the keyframes would be harder, as you'd be inside another timeline, but if you position your time cursor at the point where you want to begin the scaling, then double click into the "inner" comp, the second timeline cursor will be in the right place.

This is generally a good solution but I would avoid it if you deal with a lot of layers. Pre-comp madness can turn every project into a giant mess.
Though the better choice than using track mattes in some cases.


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Final Cut Pro- Reopen Library and Entire Timeline is Gone!
I was working with a library, arranged all my clips, audio, etc. and had a great 6 minute long video ready to go.
When I closed the library, I shut my computer off. After I rebooted, I went to reopen the library and all of the files are still part of the library, but all of the clip arranging and everything I did to it- the entire timeline- is gone!
It's just completely blank as if all I did was drop files into the library and never started working on anything from within the timeline.
What happened!? Is there any way to view all of my timeline? That's like 12 hours worth of work!
Thanks

The timeline for which you are looking is actually called a "Project".  Projects are stored within events, which are in turn stored within a library.  Just opening a library (from within the finder, for instance) will not necessarily open your project.  To do that, you need to twirl down the disclosure triangle next to your Library in the event manager, select the event upon which you were working, and then double click the Project name to load it in the timeline.  Also, make sure that you are connected to any drives or network storage locations that you might have stored media to when you created the project.


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Does the project resolution affect the quality of a chromakey?
In FCPX:
If I have 1080p footage in a 720p project, will the keyer effect (chromakey) lose quality?
To ask the question a different way:
Should I have a project with the same dimensions/resolution as the original footage when I key it, and then export it at my desired resolution later? Or is FCPX doing that in the background anyway?

There isn't a right or wrong answer here I don't think.  Both approaches have advantages.  Keying at 1080p will give you clearer detail when trying to find edges, but also will have more noise that could throw off a key.  Additionally, the downscale after the key will apply a slight blur to the image further disguising the edges to make the keying less obvious without having to do an additional blending on the 720p version.  That said, it will take additional processing effort as the image is larger and there is more area to process.
On the flip side, keying at 720p will reduce the amount of processing needed, but will not blend as well and will potentially have softer edges that don't key quite as easily.  The noise is reduced as mentioned before though, which makes the fill areas easier.  It also matches the native resolution of your final output so it may save some quality on the content being keyed in depending on what the source resolution of that content is.
If both source and key are 1080p, I might consider doing it at 1080p and then downscaling the result, but if one of them is 720p to start with, I'd probably key at 720p and soften the edge a bit unless I ran in to problems.

Interesting, I hadn't thought about the extra noise at full resolution. But what I'm trying to find out is what FCPX does behind the scenes. What you said made sense, but I don't know if FCPX is taking the full 1080p clip, keying it, and then resizing it for my project, or if it's resizing first, then keying it afterwards. I'm also working with proxy media, so I'm not sure if that affects the quality of the key either, but I would imagine that FCPX is smart enough take the original media when rendering. Hope that makes sense?

Final cut is taking the full size clip, keying it, and then resizing it.  Whenever it applies any kind of effect, it performs the calculation on the original media, even if you're working with proxy media.


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GoPro Hero 3+ Microphone Mounting
I own a GoPro Hero 3+ video camera which requires the following adapter to use an external microphone:
http://shop.gopro.com/accessories/3.5mm-mic-adapter/AMCCC-301.html
This makes mounting the microphone onto the GoPro difficult.
Does anyone know of any secure mounts for this? - I can't find any.
What do professional filmmakers use?

Professional film makers generally use audio recorded separately from the video on dedicated recorders using professional mics (using XLR cables and the like).  3.5 mm audio connectors in particular are almost exclusively a consumer level connector.  So for a professional level, the answer is use something like a Zoom h4n, h5 or h6 and microphones of your choice (either headset, lapel or most likely for action footage, shotgun mics with boom operators).
If you want to be able to do it in camera, then you will need to look in to rigging.  Many consumer/prosumerish mics that work via 3.5mm jacks are designed to mount on DSLR hot/cold shoes.  You can use video rigging to connect your GoPro on one mount point and a cold shoe mounted external mic on a cold shoe mount point on the same rig.  This will keep them together in an easily handleable form factor while keeping the mic securely attached to the same rig as the GoPro.  Note that building such rigs isn't particular cheap unless you build it yourself though.  This link goes to B&H's selection of DSLR rigs to get you started.


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Best way to increase the display size of a web video
I have a H.264 (ex-MOV, ex-Flash) video of 550px x 250 px. In the HTML player (videojs), I can easily set its size to 640px x 290px and it still looks OK (only a 16.363636% increase in display size).
Or should I increase it's size in "real pixels" by exporting it as H.264 from, say, Avanti or Handbrake at a bigger size? In Avanti, under "Frame size" I specified 640 x 290 and the file size increased by 8% and data rate from 200 kbps to 215.
What are the trade-offs - would enlarging via HTML be stressful for low-end CPUs? Is the 8% increase in file size and kbps worth it for the extra quality, if any?

If it is a flash source, then there is a good chance it has vector elements.  You should export at a higher resolution from the source rather than trying to upscale the mov file.
Working from the original will ensure accurate pixel data for any vector elements and produce a much higher quality upscale.  (This is actually one of the major reasons for Flash's early popularity.)  If that isn't an option or it was a raster format asset in Flash, then it is really a toss up between the two options depending on the quality of the original encoding.
Encoding to a new size can do slower and more accurate upscaling that will produce fewer artifacts, but if the original source you are upscaling from is already pretty low quality, a second generation of encoding loss may very well exceed the amount of quality improvement you get from the rendered out upscale.
So in summary, the best option is to export from Flash at a higher resolution.  If you can't do that, re-encode if you can do it without another generation of loss or have a high enough quality source (200kbps is not high enough for a re-encode most likely).  Finally, if you don't have that, then stick with the re-size in the player on the fly.

Got it. Just exported new MOVs from Flash at 640 x 290. After Handbrake at RF 22 the mp4 file size is about the same as using the old-MOV-to-MP4 method, kbps is 220. As for quality, will take a good look later.

Follow-up: exporting a 550 px flash movie as 640 px does result in lower image quality/sharpness when you finally get it into Mp4. The solution I found (on an Adobe forum) was to convert the existing 550px movie into a movie clip, make a new flash file of 640 px, paste the 550px movie clip into the 660 movie's library, insert the clip on the first frame of the 640 movie, increase it's size to 640px, then create the same number of frames in the 640 movie as there are in the 550 clip, then export as MOV. Everything scales, no loss of quality.

The Adobe link above is https://forums.adobe.com/thread/909211 - see final (not first) answer from robdillon


text:
Are mp4 bit rates the same as Flash bytes per frame?
I'm converting Flash movies to Mp4 (and webm) and having to learn lots about web video.
The process starts with MOVs exported from Flash. For example, I have a MOV of 640px x 290px, 1m 58s, 2843 frames, 24fps, 171 MB, 11 Mbps.
Converting that to H.264 with Handbrake, with constant quality of 20 RF, I get a file of 3.45MB with - according to MediaInfo - "overall bitrate mode: variable", and an "overall bitrate" of 240 kbps (video 79, audio 144 with max 170). Bitrate Viewer tells me the average bit rate (this might be video only) is 92 kbps, with a 1-second peak of 1019.
Then I tried Handbrake's variable bit rate, because (if I've understood its advantages correctly) there are 20 seconds with lots of motion, in the middle of the video, which might look better with a higher bit rate. With VBR 300, I get a 6.3 MB file with (MediaInfo) an overall bit rate of 440 kbps, video 300, audio 144. Bitrate Viewer has average 293 kbps, with that peak now at 3467. For about 65% of the video it is below 130 kbps. I've placed the Bitrate Viewer profiles here: http://www.casedasole.it/bitrates.html
With Flash, bytes per frame were important because, when streaming, you needed to have the browser download as much as possible in advance, so that particularly big chunks of bytes (like a big JPEG) were already loaded before the Flash player reached them.
My question is: Is that the same principle with video bit rates? Looking at that peak bitrate of 3467 (converts to 433 kB), I think: "That's OK, by then, the whole video will be loaded".  Or am I missing something?

Comparable yes but unlike Flash you have a very consistent average size over the timeline of your content. So you don't need to download as much to show content but can actually just start right away to play the video if your bandwidth is equal to (in practice it should be a bit higher of course) the average bitrate of your video. You only need to pre-load a tiny bit to account for inconsistency in the download rate.
Edit: What you have to consider when using looking at the graph you posted, you have quite a bit of very low bitrate frames, so the peak is not really that important, they somewhat cancel each other out. Whats important when streaming is the average bitrate as this is the bitrate that is needed to stream the video consistently without stopping to fill the buffer a bit more.
In reality you usually need a little more than the average to cope with very "noisy" bitrates that go up and down for long periods, your video is already a rather extreme example, usually you have a much smoother graph. It always depends on the complexity of your video to how well you can compress a frame.

So... if my mp4 is streaming at the rates shown in this graph - http://www.casedasole.it/bitrate.png - it should present no download problems over a broadband/adsl connection (provided, of course, I have a good server serving)?

usually not but you might be able to improve even further when considering the low resolution you might be able to go below 200kbps depending on the content of your video.
Its also recommenable to export with a lossless codec from flash like "Animation" which is available in QuickTime (mov).

Ah I just noticed you are the same user that posted the previous question. I just wanted to link you to http://video.stackexchange.com/questions/12508/are-the-properties-bitrate-fps-of-my-h-264-video-ok-for-the-web

Added some detail, maybe that clears it a bit up for you.

Yes, it's a "work in progress", and there's so much to learn. I'm exporting from Flash as Animation, max quality. My main concern now is to optimize the bitrates and file sizes. But eventually I might need to start looking at CDNs.

If you are committed to this and not afraid of cli applications you might want to to turn to the x264 cli or use x264 through ffmpeg to have more input formats available than with plain x264.
x264 is the encoder behind Handbrake and offers a lot of stuff to tune and has even a prediction profile suited for animation instead of live action content. There are several great guides on the internet for some professional x264 encoding.
Also always export lossless when coming from Flash to preserve maximum quality.

For now I'm using AVANTI FFmpeg/AviSynth GUI 0.8.0 for making webm. But not for mp4 - the output files have audio but no video in QT player and MPEG Streamclip; are OK in VLC player and Google Chrome; Firefox says "the file is corrupt" and won't play them with native controls or videojs player. Avanti gives me this warning: "No installation of AviSynth found (AVS options disabled)", but it's optional. Any idea what's up?: www.casedasole.it/avanti.png


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Why don't phones correct vertical filming?
Many people get really mad at filmers suffering from the Vertical Video Syndrome and I find it hard to disagree. Phone-shot videos filmed vertically are really annoying to watch.
But there's one thing I really don't get; why doesn't the phone correct that? The lens itself is always perfectly round and obviously doesn't really have an up- or downside. As far as I can imagine, shooting every video as if the phone was held horizontally would just be a formality in the software.
Is there any reason why that's never implemented? Is there any use in vertical filming?

There is indeed no technical limitation that would prevent us from preventing vertical videos in software. The issue is more of an UX/usability problem.
While the sensor would allow us to capture virtually any part of it (video has usually always a lower resolution than the sensor can provide, when making videos the phone just records a small portion of the sensor area) we kind of don't want an auto correcting orientation as its rather unintuitive. The emphasize is on kind of.
Your phone screen is 9:16 so in order to show 16:9 video on your phone screen you either need to turn your phone by 90° or show the video with giant black bars on the top and bottom, which would be very annoying when recording a video. It's quite unintuitive to record horizontally while in a vertical position, so from a UX design perspective you would say the user wants to shoot vertically when holding its phone vertically because thats what you would usually expect your phone to act like.
Hold it vertical you shoot vertical, hold it horizontal you shoot horizontal, a pretty intuitive concept.
Though its still no reason to not at least implement an option to auto correct this and my guess why phone manufacturers aren't doing this is probably largely due to increased engineering costs in the camera module (afaik it can't be done purely in software, you would probably need to alter the functionality of your camera module a bit).
Users who shoot vertically don't really care about the fact that they have a horrible aspect ratio as they mostly just watch their video on a phone anyway. Vine is a good example for that, it really promotes doing vertical video because the aspect ratio of the device that your video will be watched on most of the time has the same vertical aspect ratio.
So the demand isn't really that huge so far to warrant such a feature but I'm certain we will see this at some point.

On your last paragraph... 9X16 is the PERFECT aspect ratio for viewing on a phone, it fills the whole screen. So, it's not that Vine users don't care, it's that they are the only ones mostly doing it right. See my answer below - it's designed to be viewed the same direction it was recorded.

The issue is that you can turn your phone. It's a bit hard to turn a monitor or TV.

The default video camera app on the OnePlus One does intelligently sense what orientation you have recorded video on, and plays it exactly as you would expect. I discovered this at the weekend when uploading video I took at a Slash gig to my computer. Most of the videos were of the whole stage, but I recorded some portrait video of Slash playing solos - worked perfectly.

To start answering a question like this you need to first look at why we shoot video horizontally.  Human vision is not a square, we see much wider than we see tall.  Early TV was more or less square due to limitations of technology at the time (it's hard to make an electron beam go really far to one side without lots of extra cost or space.)  Theater however didn't have this problem and so they stuck with something that more fits human vision to make the most use of our ability to see.
Portrait video doesn't make much use of the range of our vision, but it is used in portraiture because it more naturally captures the human form (though not normally in such a narrow 9 by 16 ratio.)  Thus, some people end up naturally holding their phone to shoot video in portrait since it is both how they hold a phone and how they are used to seeing photos of individual people.
To an extent, this even makes sense for videos that will be played back on the small device where the screen size is a bigger limitation than the visible area of our vision.  For a situation like a video conference for example, portrait video makes a lot more sense, but for anything that will be seen at a larger size, portrait doesn't make sense as it drastically limits the amount of visual field we can fill.
With that established, there are two things that could be done to help with not shooting portrait.  One, you could use the accelerometer to detect vertical filming and simply prevent it (or give a warning), but this is a frustrating artificial limitation to put on users, particularly since there are some situations where it could be valid.
The second potential solution is to simply record a 16x9 image regardless of phone orientation when recording video.  Most modern smart phones have sufficient resolution to expose a 1920 pixel wide image in either direction since a 1080p image is really only a 2MP or so image.  The problem comes down to optimization.  In general, image sensors take a while to read out data from the sensor.  This is why, for example, a high end DSLR may be able to shoot 60p video but can't take more than 7 or 8 full resolution photos at a time.
To get around this readout speed problem for video (which needs 24 or more frames per second), only a portion of the sensor is actually read.  This is often hooked up to special hardware that will only read the lines of the sensor that are needed for the video and skip the others.  In sensors of this type, it would need additional hardware to skip the appropriate lines in both orientations and would increase the cost and complexity of the sensor.
Additionally, you then have a display problem.  If you are shooting a 1080p video while the camera is vertical, no phone that I am aware of has sufficient resolution for a 1:1 display of the captured video horizontally across the screen.  You could scale it down, but the aspect ratio of the phone would still make it use a very small portion of the screen when recording, making it hard to see what you are doing clearly.
So there are a lot of factors why a phone can't simply shoot horizontally regardless of orientation, ranging from the fact there are some good reasons to use the camera for video in a portrait orientation on occasion, the sensor itself may not support it and the user interface when doing so would be limiting.

I think you need to think outside the (16x9) rectangle a bit. While a lot of video filmed in portrait mode on a phone looks rubbish, that doesn't mean that filming in portrait mode is necessarily wrong — after all a lot of landscape video filmed on a phone looks rubbish too.
At my work we use 9x16 video a lot. While the format may not lend itself to the type of content you see in a cinema, there are times when portrait video works really well. For instance we have an installation comprising a projection filling the rear wall of a corridor, where full-size standing figures react to the viewer as they walk toward the screen. We put a Red One on its side and filmed it portrait because it suited the content, and we were able to use the full resolution of the format by doing it that way.
Internationally renown visual artist Bill Viola uses portrait mode video a lot, and his work is some of the most polished cinematography you'll see. A lot of his works again involve standing figures, so the ratio suits the content.
While landscape mode matches the way humans see, we don't have to limit ourselves to trying to recreate reality. Using portrait mode video creates visual tension because of the narrow field of view. It allows a full body shot to be much closer than in landscape mode, allowing for more intimate portraits of standing figures. I'm sure there are countless other examples of good uses of portrait mode video, the point being that it's the content that determines whether the form is appropriate.

Those are some great examples of video being used in a portrait context.  I figured there probably were some but I wasn't familiar with specific examples.

While I mostly agree with what Professor Sparkles says above, note that Google is attempting to convince people not to film vertical video. In this YouTube video they show the new overlay that is displayed while filming vertically on Android phones, gently encouraging the user to turn their camera.

It is supposed to be that way!!! It is recorded in vertical orientation and designed to be viewed in vertical orientation on a similar device to which it was recorded. This "problem" is not a technical limitation as has been pointed out, it is a user education issue. You are watching it wrong, and the fact that it looks terrible is a reminder of your mistake.

Ok next time I will turn my television set 90°

In 2014, when this question was first asked, it made sense to decide the viewing orientation of the recorded video up front, and to discard (or ignore) extra pixels in order to reduce the data storage requirement of the saved video.  As compression algorithms improve, and storage costs fall, this practice will become less of a technological imperative, and more of a stylistic choice or artifact of historic convention.
Camera lenses almost* always cast a round image circle on a focal plane.  When sensor manufacturers decide to make sensors non-square, they are attempting to maximize the utility of the sensor's surface area based on popular trends in video consumption.  Because a screen's viewing orientation is never guaranteed, and as users expect devices to adapt orientation on-the-fly, we will gradually see more cameras recording 1:1 aspect ratios, and displays cropping as necessary.
In a sense, we already see this with 360º videos, which capture a spherical image, and selectively crop that image based on accelerometer input during playback.  As machine learning and computer vision techniques improve, this trend will continue beyond "panoramic" imagery (where images are mapped to a sphere, cylinder, or other 3-D manifold) and progressively include true depth information.  This field is rapidly advancing in 2020. Here are a few links to recent progress, which I'm sure will become outdated very quickly:  Neural Radiance Fields for View Synthesis, and Consistent Video Depth Estimation
*The exception here are anamorphic lenses, which are more expensive to produce than normal lenses.

There might be a technical limitation: The CCD sensor.
If the CCD is not square, a mechanism needs to be created so that it is always stabilized to the ground level (something more elaborated but like the naval compasses that keep their horizontal level no matter the sea waves).
If it is not the CCD, then there should be a window that makes the 16:9 or whatever aspect ratio that the camera offers to limit the CCD sensor reception area, and in this case that window is what needs to move or part of the captured image is discarded to adjust that image to the aspect ratio.
The truth is that I'm more inclined to not squared CCD sensors, otherwise part of the CMOS memmory will be lost which is a waste of money, and in that case seems more logical to have a squared picture or movie that you can modify to the aspect ratio you like (being you the one that discards the part of the video to match the aspect ratio).

CCDs are always square or very close to square, anything else would be a complete waste.

I guess your comment is an asumption as my answer was, truth is that they DON'T have to be square as the spec for the TI TC341 CCD shows in the next link http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/tc341.pdf that CCD has nothing near a square, unless 780x488 is something near square for you.

At my workplace I've come across a couple dozen CCDs and haven't seen a non square one in any consumer device.

The linked CCD is also one of the nearly square one, the blue rectangle is the CCD not the whole package.

According to the documentation (page number 3) this CCD has 754 Active pixels plus 26 dark reference pixels by 484 active lines, so neither 754x484 nor 780x484 is near square, which makes the affirmation on your first comment a little bit too excessive. You may have come across a couple of dozen CCDs and haven't seen a non square one, but obviously the market is much wider than that. It would be nice though that you could specify the consumer devices and their CCDs spec docs that you have seen at your workplace so that we can check their "real" pixel aspect ratio.

I have to do with mostly phone cameras and small usb video cameras.
The aspect ratio of the image that gets output by the hardware might not be square but that doesn't deny the possibilty do shoot in a different aspect ratio as the CCD, as you said yourself there are a lot of pixels used for correction and some are plain dead.
Its also completely irrelevant to this question, no modern phone has less than 5-6 mega pixels which is more than enough to capture 1080p in any orientation.
And no they don't have 16:9 CCDs, you don't shoot photos in 16:9 but 5:4 or 1:1.

To answer your question, this could be done with software quite easily. A better solution would be to darken the screen like web pages do when they want your attention. Then nag the user to death about how much nicer a video would be horizontally. Then say, are you sure you still want to hold the phone vertically? Are you really, really sure? For those of you who defend vertical filming, I ask you, would you watch a movie in your theater if it were filmed vertically. Why not? Videos shown from phones are fine vertically, but people usually share them to other media including news footage.


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Easiest way to narrate video with freeze frames etc.?
I currently have a bit of experience with Premiere Pro and Windows Movie Maker. What I'm looking for is a way to basically narrate a video in real time and pause it (hold the frame) whenever I want while narrating my way through it.
Example:

How is he manipulating the video while seemlessly narrating in real time like that?

Thunderf00t created that video in the following way;

he wrote a script and then recorded his voice separately as a audio file
After that, he probably edited that audio file to get rid of any mistakes, and mastered it to make it sound nice.
He then imported that audio file to a video editor
In the video editor he added 3rd party images and video to fit his voice over

The video editing process is where the magic happens and is what makes the video so slinky. There are many how-to videos on youtube on the video editing proccess.
That being said, what you talk about in your question, reminds me of what TJ is doing on his drunken peasants channel/podcast where they play a video and pause it at curtain points to discuss whatever was in the video - all of this done in real time. In order to do that, you need to screen capture the video along with the audio of the video accompanied with your voice.

Thank you! I was wondering about the DP videos too. I figured they were just using OBS or something...

Thats not how you do it, you record a text and time your video cuts based on your voice over. Unless you stream live you dont do live editing while you do a voice over, its very impractical and makes your live a lot harder as you will not record a 5+ minute text in a single take and you will have to do everything over and over again instead of editing your video once.


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If an image under a CC-SA license gets used in video - must video be CC-SA?
I want to use an image under CC-ShareAlike in my video. The image has not been changed, however I have applied a slight zoom & pan motion to the image in the video. The video contains other images which either have expired copyright or are under CC but not share-alike.
If I use the image under CC-ShareAlike in my video, does that mean I have to make my video CC-SA as well?
thanks,

Your question in the current state hardly can be answered unambiguously. It depends on what the image is it, why do want to use it, and above all what place it would take in your video. And on jurisdiction, of course. You have to study ‘fair use’ laws of your country.

A great benefit of the CC system is that it encourages the user to contact the creator to negotiate additional rights. So, my recommendation would be to send the person who created the image an email and request permission to use his image on your video.

Hmm, one thing that isn't really worth it's own answer, but worth pointing out.  If the usage would fall within fair use, then the work including it would not need to be licensed as following the license would not be necessary since fair use supersedes the copyright which makes a license a requirement.

Yes, that's the core condition of the CC-ShareAlike license. Any derivative or work that contains the image has to be distributed under the same license for the entire video. Even if you create a long video with only one image that is licensed under CC-SA, you will have to use the same license. Using a different license would be a violation to the terms of use. This makes it complicated to use videos and images that were distributed under diverse licences, which is the main disadvantage of the CC-SA license.

It really depends on whether your video constitutes a collective work or a derivative work.  The legal deed for the CC-BY-SA licence makes this distinction:
*

"Collective Work" means a work, such as a periodical issue, anthology
  or encyclopedia, in which the Work in its entirety in unmodified form,
  along with a number of other contributions, constituting separate and
  independent works in themselves, are assembled into a collective
  whole. A work that constitutes a Collective Work will not be
  considered a Derivative Work (as defined below) for the purposes of
  this License.

*
Therefore, were you to use the image as a stand-alone work within your video (like a slide in a presentation), then you would not need to license your video under a CC-BY-SA licence because the use would not constitute a derivative work.  The only exception to this is music licensed under CC-BY-SA licences and that's because when you put music to moving images, it changes the context of the music and that IS considered a derivative work.

No you do not.
While in all practicality the answer is Yes; but there is a very important assumption that many people are making.
The condition of CC-SA licence is that if you distribute the derivative work you must distribute it under the terms compatible with this licence. Firstly this implies that there is a chance to find a different licence, which is compatible with it. Secondly, you can chose not to distribute the work and not to perform it to the public. This can be a family video that we are talking about here, that you intent to only watch yourself or with a close friends/family (which can be argued as not being "performance"). If that is the case, nobody is going to demand that you release the work to the public under any licence at all.
Unfortunately i was unable to find the text for CC-SA licence on CC website, but here's what CC-BY-SA say:
Section 3 - License conditions
Your exercise of the Licensed Rights is expressly made subject to the following conditions.

  a Attribution.

    1. If You Share the Licensed Material (including in modified form), You must:
      ...
    2. You may satisfy the conditions in Section 3(a)(1) in any reasonable manner ...
    3. If requested by the Licensor, You must remove any of the information required by Section 3(a)(1)(A) to the extent reasonably practicable.
  b ShareAlike.
    In addition to the conditions in Section 3(a), if You Share Adapted Material You produce, the following conditions also apply.

    1. The Adapter’s License You apply must be ...
    2. You must include the text of, or the URI or hyperlink to, the Adapter's License You apply...
    3. You may not offer or impose any additional or different terms or conditions on, or apply any Effective Technological Measures to, Adapted Material that restrict exercise of the rights granted under the Adapter's License You apply.

As you can see everywhere it talks about conditions on the distribution, and not the use of the work in question. That is because it is impossible to limit the use of the work by using copyright, since only the act of copying, exhibition, and broadcast can be limited. Otherwise you would be unable to sell a book that you've bought, having to get the licence to do so from the author/publisher.

@AJHenderson Licence, but its very nature, only enters into play when copyright does. And copyright doesn't matter in regard to something that is not being copied. It's like you don't have a right to copy the book, but you can sell it to anybody you want without ever having to ask for licence from the author. No new copies, no copyright, no need for a licence.

@AJHenderson Added text from the licence itself.

Ok, I missed that part.  In this case, yes, it only applies for distribution, however copyright can apply in some jurisdictions to modification of works.  This is why photographers are able to require that their works not be modified as a condition of release.  First sale says that once a copy is sold, it can be resold as it is not a new copy, but in some jurisdictions, modification and use in a derivative work is considered making a copy.  That's irrelevant in this case though as CC-SA appears to only place content under the license for redistribution.


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Resolution for webcam for recording lectures when writing on paper?
I've used a document camera for capturing handwritten lectures. To be more specific I solve exercises for my students by writing on a blank sheet of paper while explaining. So far I've been using an auditorium for this, but I'd like to do the same in my office. Thus, I need a webcam which I can mount above my desk. The biggest problem is budget, and that I work only on Macs (few webcams support OS 10.9. I've been searching for webcams and there are only a few 1080p HD cams available in nearby stores. But would a 720p HD camera be ok?
What would the experts recommend?

For online delivery and viewing on laptops/tablets, 720P should be sufficient for capturing the entire sheet in a legible way, but resolution isn't the only factor to consider...
A 1080P camera would capture higher-resolution images, but a 1-hr lecture at that size would probably result in a file size around 1GB. Assuming the intended delivery is online, the resolution/quality should probably be reduced anyway for ease of viewing/upload/download - the benefits of a better camera would likely be lost.
I'd also suggest that proper lighting & contrast are greater concerns than camera resolution.
A webcam may have issues if the room is too dark, or if the paper is too brightly illuminated (or not illuminated enough). Similarly, a black marker would be much more legible than, say, a ballpoint pen, but you can't fit as much writing on the page.
Exposure/contrast would also vary depending on if you only intend to include the white paper/writing in the frame, or yourself lecturing as well. This would be the 1 area where  resolution might matter - how much of the screen is actual writing?
I'd recommend buying the (presumably cheaper) 720p one at a store with a 30-day return policy & do some test lessons in the actual environment. Play with lighting, camera position, etc. If students are happy viewing them, you're all set. If not, try 1080p :)


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How to Record a Dark scene without any Noise?
I am using Nikon D3200, I am trying to shoot a dark scene. The scene is so dark and there is minimal amount of light. I am shooting in manual mode and these are my settings. ISO 200, f/5.2, Shutter Speed 1/50.
With all these settings i am getting so much noise in the scene. Kindly tell me how to avoid noise in the Dark Scene.
Thanks
Taha

With low light levels your brightest signal will be close to the noise floor, so you only really have three options:

a camera with better low light performance (although this can only take you so far)

More expensive sensors can give a lower noise floor, allowing you to resolve more detail

a faster lens

As Jason commented:

If the widest aperture on your kit lens is 4.0, then you could double the amount of light your camera sees by purchasing an f2.8. Every additional "stop" doubles the light, so if you could find an f1.0, you'd be getting 16 times the light that f4.0 allows.

more light

Your easiest option may be just to increase the illumination and then reduce brightness in post. Remember that if you do this, you also need to watch for shadows that look too sharp.

Since this is such a good answer already, I'll just mention one possible addendum.  Buy a faster lens.  If the widest aperture on your kit lens is 4.0, then you could double the amount of light your camera sees by purchasing an f2.8.  Every additional "stop" doubles the light, so if you could find an f1.0, you'd be getting 16 times the light that f4.0 allows.

+1 for shoot with more light and darken in post.

@Jason - I have incorporated your comment. Thanks

Or more light and turn down the exposure in the camera?  Or is it better to let the camera use a high iso setting, so you have more dynamic range for flexible post-processing?  (banding could be a concern, since you have less than the usual bit-depth if you're working with 0-63 instead of 0-255 because nothing is brighter than 1/4 of white, right?)  So probably better to have the camera amplify before feeding it to its lossy hardware h.264 encoder, if we're talking about video.

I recommend the last option, if anyone is interested in finding out more, the technique is commonly known as 'Day for night'


text:
Small profile camera for recording a lecture (from a student's seat)
I would like to videotape my professors' lectures much like others record the audio from the lectures. Of course I don't want to be a nuisance for my other classmates, so I'm wondering what my best bet would be for recording decent video from a small profile camera. I'm considering buying a friend's "old" iphone 4s but I have no idea how it would cope resolution-wise, lens-angle-wise (I suspect I will need a wide-angle lens converter) battery-wise and memory-wise. The total run time will be at most two continuous hours and then I will transfer it to my netbook and recharge the iphone for the next lecture. Any ideas/suggestions/other camera suggestions?

Since your camera will have a fixed position and you will be filming under stable lighting conditions, you don't need a fancy camera. An iPhone will do fine, the results will be satisfactory. Since a lecture isn't really about beautiful pictures anyway, I wouldn't put to much thought into it.
However, if you want to invest some money in a fair camera, I would probably go for a Sony Camcorder, e.g. the Sony HDR-CX330. Those offer a good compromise between usability, recording quality and price.
However, what is really important is the micro. If you use the micro of the camera, the audio will completely suck, no matter which camera you chose. Make sure to get a decent micro, rather than an expansive camera!
And of course, although you are probably aware of that: You need to ask your professor for permission ;)

Sounds reasonable, but do you think the battery will be able to last for 2 hours continuous recording (and will the resulting file be able to be that big)?

In my experience, the battery of these Camcorders usually last about 3 to 3,5 hours of straight recording, 2 hours should be no problem.
The file size is another matter. You should get an SD card with at least 16 GB free space. I have never continously recorded over such a long time. The camera might split the recorded file at some point, or, in the worst case, stop the recording. In any case, you should sit next to the camera and check it from time to time and restart the recording if needed.
Also, doing a testrun of long-time recording would be a good idea.


text:
Blackmagic Hyperdeck Recorder?
I'm running an event next weekend and I'm in crunch time with planning. I've done dozens of these events but this is the first time I'm travelling so far to do it and with the clients equipment. I was thinking about purchasing a hyperdeck and a couple of 512mb ssds to record our event and make sure I've got a good high res version of the program feed. I've not used one and I'm wondering if I'm going to run in to any issues with recording in DNxHD on the device then editing on my win7 edit bay in premiere.
I was thinking about taking my atem studio to use a mixer (we're doing 2 or 3 cams and they already have an edirol hd mixer) then running program out of it, in to the hyperdeck to record, out of that in to my computer for final edit with wirecast and archiving it there and also putting it up on the video screen. Final destination is the web.
How can I add the live audio to the hyperdeck feed to archive as well?

As long as your audio is coming over HDMI/SDI with your video stream there is nothing you have to do to record audio aswell. If audio is coming in separately you will want to use an HDMI audio injector or a more expensive SDI audio injector depending on what you use.
And no, there is nothing holding you back of using the hardware in the way you intend to. Though with every new hardware you take to live events, do a dry run before actually using it live and before driving to the event, or you can end up with a nasty surprise.

I'm going to try and use a bmd hdmi to sdi adapter I already have. It has hdmi in and 1/4 audio. It should be fine. I'll monitor the video and audio with a playback device. I am a little concerned with the audio sync. But I guess I can fix that in post.

Audio should be in sync unless you have a major delay between video capture device and audio capture device.


text:
What is a subtle displacement at the moment of the cut?
In In the blink of an eye book (page 6), Walter Murch explains that displacements at the moment of the cut should be either subtle or total:

What we do seem to have difficulty accepting are the kind of displacements that are neither subtle nor total: Cutting from a full-figure master shot, for instance, to a slightly tighter shot that frames the actors from the ankles up. The new shot in this case is different enough to signal that something has changed, but not different enough to make us re-evaluate its context: The displacement of the image is neither motion nor change of context, and the collision of these ideas produces a mental jarring—a jump—that is comparatively disturbing.

As I understand it, all following cuts are total, right?

A cut from a person walking down the street to the same person leaving the elevator and walking to the door of his flat,
A cut from a person walking down the street to the same person turning at the corner of the same street,
A cut from a person walking down the street with the camera showing him from the front to the same person on the same street with the camera from behind,

But then, what exactly is a subtle displacement? A displacement which is neither subtle nor total?
Would a cut from a 35mm shot of a house with a person in front of it to a 50mm shot of the same house and the same person will be considered as a subtle displacement?
I don't recall seeing any subtle displacement in movies. Are they used at all? Are there any well-known examples of such cuts?

See the wikipedia entry on the thirty degree rule, which, coincidentally, quotes the same book you mention.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/30-degree_rule

@JasonConrad: thank you, the link is useful and the page links to 180-degree rule I didn't know either.

Subtle cuts are cuts that are blended such that you don't notice they are occurring.  They are the hardest type of cuts to pull off.  You can do them during a quick pan or if you have a near stationary scene.
The key point that Walter Murch is getting at is that jump cuts, cuts where the viewer is jarred in to noticing the cut, should generally be avoided as they break continuity.  As with any guideline, there are exceptions and in some situations you may want to intentionally jar the audience, but generally, you avoid it by either having a major change in context or angle or you blend it so smoothly that the cut is not noticeable.
For a great example of a subtle cut, look at the boat sinking sequence used frequently in the TV show Arrow (available on Netflix).  There is a shot where they go from being in a cabin there is a whoosh of water as the girl is washed out of the boat and then we are looking at a shot from outside.  While there is no clear cut, a transition was made (though in this case it could also be a total cut as there is a context shift).
You may also occasionally notice subtle cuts in documentaries when the editor is able to make a cut between takes where the speaker's head was positioned in the same spot and so you don't actually particularly notice that an edit was made.  These are only possible when the situation lends itself perfectly to such an edit, but it can sometimes be done.

I think I understand what you are describing with the boat. Sometimes in ski videos people will have POV footage (like with a helmet camera) and then spray up a big woosh of snow, and when the snow stops blocking the frame and we can see again it is a new angle, like someone filming the skier from the front instead of POV, or the skier is on an obviously different run. Is that the same concept you are describing with the subtle cut?

@PrinceM not really, I'd describe that more as a transition.  If you did consider it a cut, it would still be a total cut as it's obvious things changed.  Subtle cuts are best done with things like the movie 1917 where they did legitimately use very long shots, but they also had points where they could cut so subtly you don't notice unless you directly look for them.  Most often they worked in a similar kind of manner to the snow you mentioned, such as with an object in the foreground on a motion controlled shot, but the difference is that the shot appears to remain continuous despite the cut.


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Does youtube store different video files for different bit rate?
First of all, is the technique called "resampling" ?
Does youtube make live resampling for every user ? Isn't it too cpu costly ? So far what i know about codecs is that it has to go through many encoding steps ( compression, motion prediction etc etc ). All this things happens live ?
Or it encode and save different video files for different bitrate, so that when a user changes bitrate it servers that file.
Isn't that a disk space destroyer too ?

Does youtube store different video files for different bit rate?

Yes

is the technique called "resampling" ?

No

Does youtube make live resampling for every user ?

No

All this things happens live ?

No, not on youtube. But Yes on twitch.tv

Or it encode and save different video files for different bitrate, so
  that when a user changes bitrate it servers that file.

Yes

Isn't that a disk space destroyer too ?

Yes

Thanks ! Any idea why youtube does that ?

As opposed to transcoding everything on the fly? Because transcoding takes a ton of CPU resources. Better to do it just once.

Just to add a little bit more info to SlimSCSI's straight up answer.

Does youtube store different video files for different bit rate?

Yes and no, for the 1080p stream YouTube utilizes a technique called DASH. This serves essentially a video that was encoded with several different bitrates (though its one file) and adapts the bitrate on the fly according to bandwidth capabilities on the user side.
This is not true for any other resolution lower than 1080p.

Isn't that a disk space destroyer too?

It does use up more disk space but disk space is very cheap nowadays.
Destroyer? No, the increase in size is not that huge as the higher bitrate streams can "share" information with the lower bitrate ones.

Adapt bit rate on the fly ? Does it use special codec ? If it is the same codec, what happens internally in codec so that it encodes with different bit rate ? Is it something like bigger bitrate have max microblock that lower bitrate shares ?

Have a look at these articles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_bitrate_streaming
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Video_Coding
http://www.hhi.fraunhofer.de/de/kompetenzfelder/image-processing/research-groups/image-video-coding/scalable-video-coding/svc-scalable-extension-of-h264avc.html
The Frauenhofer one is very indepth.


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4k vs. 1080p on a 1080p monitor
Is it smart to watch a 4k video on a 1080p monitor versus watching it in 1080p (especially on youtube)? Is there any difference for the human eye?

No, there is no difference to the human eye (or exceptionally minimal).  Your monitor can't display higher quality than it is capable of displaying.  The only advantage you would have is if you were to zoom in on part of the image, you would have more detail when you zoomed in.
The exception to this is if the 4k stream uses enough extra bandwidth to reduce the number of artifacts present in the stream, but for a well configured stream this shouldn't be a significant factor.  For Youtube settings, that may or may not be noticeable depending on your sensitivity to artifacts and the type of content you are viewing.

Is it in the case of youtube any different because they maybe use different compression ratios (favoring 4k)?

@haywire If anything I'd expect higher compression on 4k. It takes more bandwidth, fewer people can use it and even fewer will notice extra small artifacts in a gigantic image.  That's totally a guess though.

Hmm.. so I still have no definite answer. It says "especially for youtube" in my question. :( thanks for your effort though!

@haywire no problem. I hope someone can answer it more definitively for you. I was just letting you know what I do know.  :)

On YouTube, resolutions above 1080p, especially 4K, have a significantly higher bitrate, resulting in far less compression artifacts on a 1080p monitor. I generally consider YT's 1080p quality as poor for any more detailed video, but have been rather satisfied with 4K. See this video by a computer game critic where he recommends doing so.

There's not a lot of point to it. You're using more network bandwidth to download it, and your computer is working harder to display it, but no, you get no additional visible quality from it. In fact, it's likely that you'll get lower quality because the computer has to downsample it before it can display it.

Others have said the answer is simply no, but that's not entirely true. You can get some slight improvement from downscaling; errors and artifacts in the stream will be less visible, but this slight improvement usually isn't worth the increased bandwidth usage and CPU usage.  Effective downscaling also requires graphics which can manage it, Nvidia GTX GPUs can do this, I'm not sure about AMD or Intel graphics.

On youtube? It depends.
Youtube recompresses video uploads to reduce space and store a version of the video which requires the least CPU to decompress. I've uploaded 1080p videos which later look horrible in the youtube version. And the same happens with 4k video.
Having said that, it is very unlikely youtube will increase the quality of the video streams, which means 1080p video will always look as horrible as it looks now. So in a way, watching a 4k poorly compressed video stream on a 1080p monitor may look more pleasant if the video doesn't have much movement.
When the video is still, a 4k low bandwidth video will be able to provide a more detailed picture which scaled down will look better than a low bandwidth 1080p video. But if you are looking at action footage, 4k youtube is only going to bring you higher visual artefacts.
A good example of how horrible youtube recompression is can be seen at

 which is a 4k video comparison of the Samsung Galaxy Alpha and Sony Xperia Z3 Compact. Watch the 4k youtube video and then download the raw 4k footage from the provided mediafire links. The most noticeable artefacts are in the lower part of the screen representing the Sony Xperia version: the 4k youtube version shows terrible compression artefacts around the shadow of the cameraman, but the raw 4k version is smooth as silk and the soft shadows look gorgeous.
If that doesn't convince you, think of it this way: the download size for the 4k youtube version is around 600MiB, the download size for the raw 4k video is 1.5GiB. So essentially anything you watch on youtube is one third the quality you get from the camera.
As with the general question of watching 4k on a 1080p monitor, yes, there is difference, there are comparisons of video between prosumer 1080p cameras and mobile 4k cameras and the 4k mobile version downscaled to 1080 looks better because it has sharper edges. But of course the difference is more notable on a 4k screen, and as other say, really good 1080p cameras are still much better than crappy 4k ones.

Hey, welcome to Video Production, sorry to down vote, but this really doesn't seem to actually provide any information relevant to answering the question.  You provide good coverage of if a 4k source is comparable to a 1080 source and you provide an ok description of the difference in youtube 4k re-encoding vs the original footage, but nothing in your post really touches on if it is better to watch 4k footage on a 1080p monitor or the scaled down 1080p version of the same footage, which is what the question seems to be asking about.

Note that there are also some minor technical inaccuracies or points that are misleading.  For example, while the file size is around 1/3 for the Youtube clip, that doesn't mean that there is necessarily 1/3 of the meaningful information.  Rather, a small amount of low value information is discarded resulting in allowing far better compression of the remaining data, so less than 2/3 of the information is actually discarded, it is just made to be more compact and even the data that is discarded is selected for lack of importance.

Similarly, many of the compression artifact in the lower version of the video are likely related to over-recompression.  When compressing from a low quality source to another low quality source, it is more likely that artifact not visible to the eye in the first video will become apparent.  If a high quality source 4k feed was used, then the quality of the encoding would be much better, even at the same file size since the encoding would be working on source and not artifacts as a starting point.  This is why, as you observed, the problems are most noticeable on the Xperia.

If you can add some details relevant to the question or explain why you think your take on the question is correct (I tried but couldn't see it) and fix the misleading points, then I'd be happy to change it from a down to an up.

These answers are all very misleading, you'd think after 5 years someone would've told the truth, or did some research on this. Yes running your youtube videos over your monitors resolution WILL increase the clarity of the video. This is because youtube videos have a very low bit rate to allow for the platform to stream as many videos on an hourly basis that it does. As resolution increases for youtube playback, so does the bitrate, and so does definition, or clarity of the video. Im sure everyone has paused a 1080p youtube video when something is moving, and noticed a very harshly pixelated motion blur effect. This is greatly reduced at 1440p and 4k resolutions respectively, because more pixels are being pushed per second, being the bitrate.

Welcome! We try to keep things polite and positive here. Everyone is encouraged to review our Code of Conduct.

Everyone who says that it's useless to watch 4k video on a 1080p monitor is wrong.

You don't understand what that video is saying.  It is talking about cameras not displays.  Consumer cameras shoot 4:2:0 instead of 4:2:2 or 4:4:4.  This results in a loss of color information when shooting.  4k doesn't use the same 4:2:0 sub-sampling on consumer recordings for most of the 4k capable smart phones right now, so it looks better.  If you played a 4:2:2 1080p video next to a 4:2:2 4k video, there would be no advantage to the 4k video unless the bitrate was proportionally higher.


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How Can I Reduce Noise On a 5D Mk3?
The internet is full to bursting with comparisons of noise on the 5D Mk3 at different ISOs, but there is next to nothing about how to reduce noise or work with it / around it.
I am experiencing noise across all ISO settings, but obviously worse the higher I go. I never shoot above 800 and try and stay as low as possible. I am careful not to underexpose, but I still get a fizzy noise in the midtones and shadows.
I appreciate that the 5D is flawed when it comes to video and I don't need to be told how a dedicated video camera will achieve better results; I am a stills photographer and I don't want to buy a second camera.
So given the known limitations of the 5D Mk3, how can I shoot to reduce the noise and what workflows are best for removing noise in post?
I am shooting Cinestyle and will soon be shooting RAW via Magic Lantern.

use more light.

Certainly using RAW on ML will help.  With 14 bit color, your noise reduction options are a lot more advanced.  Traditional noise reduction that you are used to from photos can be used with video as well using either color grading software or editing software.  (With RAW video, it would be in the color grading software before mixing down to processed clips.)  Additionally, with RAW, you won't have the encoding artifact which you may be misinterpreting as noise as well.
That said, how bad of noise are you getting.  I'm in the reverse situation of you.  I started as a video guy and switched to photography and got the 5D Mark iii because of it's strengths in both areas.  You should not be getting significant noise issues below 800 ISO on your 5D Mark iii unless something is wrong.  The 5D Mark iii shoots outstanding video and with RAW is compared fairly closely (though still noticeably different from) much more expensive cameras like the C300 or even some lower end ARRI cameras.
It is generally applauded for it's high video quality and good low light video capability.  Can you post a sample that demonstrates the problem you are seeing?  I wonder if there might be some other issue causing your problems as my 5D Mark iii doesn't give what I would consider unreasonable noise levels on video even at ISOs like 3200 or even 6400 in some lighting conditions.
ISO 3200 video frame grab

There is some noise, but it's pretty limited, particularly considering this is in the shadows under a desk, inside, with no other light other than what was coming in through the window above the table.  There are some newer cameras in the same or lower price range that have slightly improved on the capability, but the 5D mark iii is still one of the top contenders last time I looked around.
Other than that, the easiest option, like Jason Conrad mentioned, is to use more light and lower numbered ISO.

Like it is said in a comment, use more light and dial the ISO down.  This is how filmmaking has been done for years and years.
My guess is on the MK3 5D if you are getting tons of noise, you are underexposing and maybe trying to correct it in post.  The MK3 is rpetty good and doesn't generate a lot of noise.
If you absolutely have to shoot at a higher ISO that is giving you noise, my advice would be to check out neat video, they make an aftereffects plugin to reduce noise.  But it will in turn most likely becoming less sharp.
Another way many filmmakers deal with it is by adding film grain on top, that way it looks like it was shot on a real nice film stock, and the noise is hidden behind the grain.

go to this post of canon and I think it can be helpfull:
https://support.usa.canon.com/kb/index?page=content&id=ART143838&act=RATE&impressions=false&isCCA=true&newguid=6d0a16cf8896407382590864d90a63f2


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YouTube 3gp encoding settings
I'm building a new media site and I'm taking cues from YouTube for which video file formats I should offer for widespread usability among mobile and desktop clients.  I'm doing all transcoding using ffmpeg.  My trouble is that YouTube's .3gp files have a Codec ID of "3gp6", a Video Format of "MPEG-4 Visual", and a Video Format Profile of "Simple@L1" (using mediainfo to interrogate the files.) I can't figure out which ffmpeg settings I can use to reproduce this.
If I use -vcodec libx264 -profile:v baseline -level 1 in my ffmpeg command, then the file comes out with the right Codec ID, but the Video Format is "AVC" and the Profile is "Baseline@L1.0".
Alternately, if I use -vcodec mpeg4 -profile 0 -level 1, then the Video Format and Profile are correct, but the Codec ID is "3gp4" instead of "3gp6".
So my question is, how can I use ffmpeg to arrive at a Codec ID of 3gp6 along with a format of MPEG-4 Visual and a profile of Simple@L1?  I've been unsuccessfully Googling and experimenting on this for hours.

I asked on the ffmpeg-users mailing list, and it was suggested that I add -brand 3gp6 to my encoding command.  This achieved the result in mediainfo that I was looking for.  However, it remains to be seen whether this really reaches the same compatibility with older hardware that YouTube's 3GP files have.  I don't have any old hardware to test with, lol.  Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, problem solved for now!
If anyone is interested, here is the command I ended up with for reproducing YouTube's "Format 36", which is a 360x180 3GP video with about 230 Kbps overall bitrate:
ffmpeg -i input-file.mov -vcodec mpeg4 -s 320x180 -qscale:v 20 -brand 3gp6 \
    -vf 'scale=iw*sar:ih,pad=max(iw\,ih*(16/9)):ow/(16/9):(ow-iw)/2:(oh-ih)/2' \
    -acodec libfaac -ar 22050 -ac 1 -qscale:a 70 output-file.3gp

And here is what I came up with for reproducing its "Format 17", which is a 176x144 3GP video with about 82 Kbps overall bitrate:
ffmpeg -i input-file.mov -vcodec mpeg4 -s 176x144 -qscale:v 12 -r 10 -level 8 -brand 3gp6 \
    -vf 'scale=iw*sar:ih,pad=max(iw\,ih*(11/9)):ow/(11/9):(ow-iw)/2:(oh-ih)/2' \
    acodec libfaac -ar 22050 -ac 1 -qscale:a 45 output-file.3gp

In case you're wondering, that massive "-vf" argument automagically detects mismatches in aspect ratios between the input and output, and boxes the output if they differ.

Why would you want your videos in the .3gp container to begin with? Its a very irrelevant format nowadays, there is practically no device that supports the 3gp container but not MP4 at the same time. Its nothing but a close derivative of MP4, they are very similar container formats holding the same codec. If you want to support a lot of devices using h264 in the mp4 container opens your website up to the majority of mobile an desktop devices, in addition vp8/webm offers compatibility to open source software that can't afford h264 license or doesn't want to use h264. With these two formats you are covering every relevant market.
http://caniuse.com/#feat=mpeg4
http://caniuse.com/#feat=webm
3gp is a depricated format for legacy phones, long before the Android and iOS era when YouTube was new and started to add a bit of mobile support and its nearly identical with MP4, some manufactures even name their 3gp files with the .mp4 extension (wiki)
Also note that having your files have the same meta information as those from YouTube is not an indicator if they are compatible or not, YouTube uses a different encoder than you and the encoder will write different information than x264 in ffmpeg. If your file meets the specs of a certain format than its compatible, easy as that.
If you want to go sure you don't use any fancy format features just use a low profile (e.g. baseline in the case of h264) to ensure compatibility with virtually any device, the lower the profile the less features are allowed.
If you REALLY need to use 3gp you can specify the container with the option -f 3gp. Using the BaseLine 1 profile is absolutely suffice.
Using a ffmpeg commandline like the following will get you what need:
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf scale=320:240 -vcodec mpeg4 -acodec aac -strict -2 -f
3gp output.3gp

Note the usage of mpeg4 instead of libx264. The mpeg4 encoder is the Mpeg4 Part 2 codec also known as h263. Again, extremely few devices nowadays do not support h264 and I can only advice to support h263 in the 3gp container when you are in dire need to do so or have an extremely large user base that ranks in the tens of millions of users.
Having 3gp6 instead of 3gp4 is irrelevant, you are targeting old devices so using the newest version of the standard doesn't make much sense. FFmpeg will use the 3gp6 container only when using the also newer codec h264 which release 6 is also meant for.
Here and excerpt from the 3gpp v6 standard:
Specific MBMS Rel-6 application codecs are introduced, like for example audio codecs Extended AMR-WB (AMR-WB+), Enhanced aacPlus and video codec H.264/AVC.

So unless you use h264, there is no need for using Release 6 and you can stick with Release 4 without running into any issues.
The opposite is actually the case, the older the version the more old devices you will support.

I'm not sure why YouTube still offers 3GP formats, but since they still do in this late year of 2014, I'm guessing it's for a good reason.  They target not just the US where smarphones are abundant. They also target everywhere else, like 3rd-world countries where supposedly "dumb" phones offer all the Internet people can get. Maybe this is YouTube's purpose in still carrying 3GP.  My site also targets the world audience.  And I'm not just doing 3GP. I'm also doing MP3, WEBM, and FLV like YouTube does. It's just the 3GP part I'm stuck on.

The only reason is for really old phones, they just have to remux their mp4 encodes so its barley any extra work, wouldn't be suprised if they not just change a few bytes in the header.
There is a very little percentage of phones that supports 3gp but not mp4.
What is your reason for that huge compatability, does you audience mostly consist of legacy device users?

It's in the name of reaching the widest possible audience. But I recognize that the last X percent may take too much effort to reach. Still, if there's an "easy" way to coerce ffmpeg to give me 3gp6 files using MPEG-4 Visual and Simple@L1, I'd like to try it.

I added info on how to encode your videos like that but again, you should definitely see if thats really worth it. It's like doing optimizations for IE6 and 7.

Another edit regarding 3gpp v6 vs v4


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Letterbox when converting 4k to 1080p
Got handed a pile of stock footage downloaded from various sites. And found one clip is 4k ( 4096x2160)
I put it into AME to reexport it as DNx115 but when I set it to 1920x1080 23.976 I see letterboxing top and bottom. It says the source clip pixel ratio is 1 and mine is 1.. tried the others for kicks but none get rid of it.
Why am I getting letterbox for this conversion?

Because 4096 / 1920 = 2.13333 and 2160/1080 = 2.  They are different aspect ratios, so yes, they end up letter boxing when you convert between them.  That is the expected result.
The 4K format you are using is a multiple of 2K and is not the same widescreen aspect ratio as 1080p.  You can't translate between them without letterboxing, though there are several different competing "4k" resolutions, so it won't hold true for all "4k" formats, but it does for the one you are working with.

guess i should have done the math.. got stuck on my assumptions. Thanks!


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What to do when camcorder angle does not cover entire area to record?
I'm trying to record an indoor soccer game from the middle of the bleachers. However, I cannot backup enough to get the entire field in the recording area.
I thought about fish-eye lenses but I'm guessing the video will be distorted near the edges where the goals are. I would like to avoid that if possible.
Another option is to try placing the camera near one of the edges of the field and backing up until the entire field is in the recording area.
Any ideas? I have no experience with videography so simpler solutions are preferred.
Thanks.

Have you found a camera to solve this?

You're correct that you either need to place the camera farther away until the entire field is in view, or use a wide-angle lens adapter (not necessarily "fisheye" but wider). For indoor soccer, clearly you're limited by the walls.
Presumably, you want to hit "record" and enjoy watching the game, rather than having to actively pan the camera back & forth. Also, I'm presuming you only have 1 camera & 1 operator, and you don't really intend to edit the footage together later... If that's the case, look for a wide-angle adapter & put the camera as far away & as high up as possible (a GoPro or similar as suggested previously might be easier to stick high up on the wall :))
For most basic consumer camcorders, you can get a wide-angle adapter to screw onto the front for about ~$40 (make sure the lens & screw threads are the same size or find one specifically compatible for your camera). That should give you ~20-30% wider field of view. It won't be perfect & might be slightly distorted, but it will capture more of the field than you would otherwise.
That still probably won't be enough to capture the entire game from mid-field, but it will get more of it. To fit the whole thing you'd likely need to be up on the ceiling or on a ladder at the top of the bleachers. Not safe, or easy to maneuver.
If you watch professional soccer matches on TV, you'll notice that they don't capture the entire field either, but instead follow the action of the ball. This is because 1) that's the focal point of the game and 2) In order to really see the whole field the camera would have to be so far away you wouldn't really be able to tell what's going on anymore.
There's little/no zooming (instead they cut between cameras). They tend to keep the player w/the ball just off-center, so there's room for them to run & not go out of frame. Mid-range or close-up shots are usually done w/separate cameras, often at field level along the sidelines. As you'd suggested, you could put a camera near the goal line & see the whole field, but then you're down low & will only capture what happens nearby in that half of the field.

The problem you are running in to is that your field of view is not wide enough.  The field of view is determined by the sensor size and the focal length of the lens.  You can't change the sensor size, but you can sometimes use filters on the lens to impact the effective focal length of the lens.  The result is normally pretty shoddy for such filters, but it is about the best you can hope for unless you can find an angle that allows you to fit the entire scene within your widest field of view for the camera.  Also, as you suspected, filters that expand the field of view are generally not rectilinear which means that they distort the image and make it look kind of stretched.  This effect isn't limited just to the edges, but it is the most prominent there.
What you really want is a camera with a wider field of view.  If you have enough budget for it, an action cam, such as a GoPro is really ideal for this kind of situation because it is both small and has a naturally wide field of view for taking in a large scene like this.  Many such wide angle lenses will be rectilinear and should give you a much more natural looking projection of the scene onto a flat screen.

If a wider angle and better resolution (needed when subjects become smaller in frame) is out of the question then try a remote panning head that will follow a player automatically. This robot head can pan to follow action remotely http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1023888-REG/solo_shot_soloshot2_robot_cameraman.html

I would like to follow the ball, not a specific player.

Not sure if you can attach a transmitter to the ball, but its an interesting use case.