text:
What software is used to produce this videos?
I am wondering what software is used to produce video like this ? note it contains animation , sound effects, graphics, etc.

Best reagrds

You can use Adobe After effects for this kind of videos.

An animation like this could be produced on a large range of software. You'd need an image editor - eg gimp, photoshop. Then you need a program that can do animation, eg. blender, natron, synapse, after effects, nuke. You'll need something to record and edit audio, eg. audacity, protools, adobe audition, lmms, and probably a NLE to cut it all together, eg Kino, kdenlive, blender, final cut, imovie, premiere, windows movie maker.
Thing is that the software does do the animation, the animator does.

Thanks @stib , I am looking for one software that can be do the whole job. by the way there is some online services make perfect animation like that like goanimate.com, but what I need is one program.

I'm building a house. Can you recommend a tool that will do the whole job for me?

@stib OK ,, Idea have revealed clearly .. TNX


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Extract the frame (in image format) at exactly every minute (or second) from a video (by ffmpeg)
Motivation: I would like to seek the frame, then take high quality and exact time screenshots (images) from a video.
The video is length is 00:48:43.71 and 23.98 fps (we can think it is 24 fps, isn't it?).

With reference from this webpage: Create a thumbnail image every X seconds of the video
I wrote some commands that grab a frame every hour, every minute, and every second.
After exterminating the images, the screenshots are in fact taken from the half hour, half minute, and half second. You will understand shortly.
For example, the command to grab a frame every minute, it is in fact extracting the frame at the half minute, which means the 00:00:30 , 00:01:30 , 00:02:30 , and so on. That is why I name to filename as follow:
ffmpeg -i "video.mp4" -start_number 0 -vf fps=1/60 "B 00-%02d-30.000.png"

(adding the "B" prefix is to prevent overwriting by different commands.)
For example, to grab a frame every second from 00:03:00 to 00:04:00, the commend is:
ffmpeg -i "video.mp4" -start_number 0 -vf fps=1 -ss 00:03:00 -to 00:04:00 "C 00-03-%02d.500.png"

To verify them, we can extract all the frames from 00:03:29 to 00:03:31 :
ffmpeg -copyts -ss 00:03:29 -i "video.mp4" -start_number 0 -to 00:03:31 "D 00-03-29.%03d.png"

We may check the following image files are identical:
D 00:03:29.012.png is identical to C 00:03:29.500.png.
D 00:03:29.024.png is identical to B 00:03:30.000.png.
D 00:03:29.036.png is identical to C 00:03:30.500.png.

Those are my findings from trials and errors this morning. Here comes my question:
Let's take "extract a frame at exactly every minute" as an example, how can we get / what is the command to get the frames 00:00:00.000 , 00:00:01.000, 00:00:02.000 , and so on?
I have just heard of ffmpeg this morning. I still do not know what -copyts means (after reading the docs) and when I need to put -ss position before -i and when to put it at the output part. So please do correct me if I am using the wrong commands.

I would say that you might be overthinking it a little. You could speed up the video mathematically (in an editor) and then extract all of the frames from that. For example in Blender we could, if it is 24fps, speed it up by 1440 times (to get 1 frame every minute) and then export all of the frames from the video as PNG or another format to a folder. I use this for time-lapses sometimes, and this way there is no scripting involved. I would still put the 23.98 into the equation to make sure you are getting the exact frames and not skipping over a couple.
Just multiply your fps by your increments in sec.
(fps*sec)
Hope this helps!

source: Stack Exchange

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

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

sort: votes


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Sony Vegas - Repeat a shot on an axis when panning
I'm pretty new to video production and I'm doing a few music videos for an underground rapper and he wanted me to recreate an effect seen in this video, a good example is from around 1:09 to 1:11. As you can see, the shot is basically cut and the cut-out is panned up, but the video 'repeats' on the X axis, showing the top of the shot at the bottom if that makes sense. My approach to this is creating two duplicate tracks, using the cookie cutter effect on one of them and panning the other, but that doesn't produce the 'repetition' seen in the example. Can anyone point me in the right direction? Thanks.

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


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Wireless focus for the Ronin-M
I've recently purchased a Ronin-M and have been shooting a good bit of run-n-gun projects with it. But the biggest limitation I've found with it is focusing, so I've started looking around for wireless focus systems, but the best deal that I can find is more than the gimbal itself (the RedRock MicroRemote). Does anyone know of any (-$1000) system for one-man focusing on a small gimbal?

Depends on the type of mount your camera has. This is a good solution for the A7S or A7R and was recently shown at NAB: The Aputure DEC. They also have one for MFT.
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?ci=23192&N=3989452947&mnp=0&mxp=1000
And this should be available soon!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1608311032/lenzhound-wireless-lens-motor-control-system/

That's a really neat deal, I'm using Nikon though...I'll keep an eye out for the lenshound to be released.


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Getting inspiration for a first short film
I have a large amount of photo and video kit, and have always enjoyed casual photography and videography.
I really want to make a short film, just for the sake of it, for the enjoyment of the process etc.
But I have no Idea what I want to produce.
Where should I look for inspiration?
One caveat:
I live in a small but dull town, and don't really have many friends here, so it would need to be mostly non people-based.

Create a documentary about the history of the place.

Could create a piece just using either iconic or artistic shots of the town to a nice piece of music, as above do a documentary on the town. maybe your town has something or someone who does something extraordinary like a blacksmith, woodworking, makes shoes etc, do a docu on them and tell their story


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Streaming WebM on unsupported platforms (Safari, IE, etc)
I'd like to stream WebM videos to browsers that don't support it (like Safari/IE). I have no problem in converting the video to a supportable format (like MP4), but the encoding should be on-demand, that is, the server should stream the MP4 content while it's being converted from Web (WebM -> MP4). I've seen a few solutions like Dash and Stream-M, but all these seem to do it the other way around (MP4 -> WebM). Is there a solution that already exists for my problem? Or do I need to build my own hack? And also is this solution the only way to stream WebM content onto Safari/IE?


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How can I reduce the size of a webm to 2MB?
Let's say that I have a webm of XMB, and I want to resize it to 2MB in order too upload it to some websites. How can I do it?
Is there a website? Can I downsize them in mass?

Use Avanti with ffmpeg. The former has a job control manager where you drop in multiple files at once and go. You can find webm encoding guide for ffmpeg here: http://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Encode/VP8
Use crf mode encoding and experiment till you get desired size. Set b:v high like 10M and tweak CRF value and if you have no audio, use -an in place of -c:a libvorbis.
Your Avanti GUI should look like this:

Change the crf number (30 in that pic) till you get the size you want.

CRF and target bitrate are mutually exclusive.  one-pass target bitrate is almost never the best choice, so just use -crf 25 -preset veryslow or something.

With CRF specified, b:v is treated as the max allowable bitrate, not the target bitrate.

No, it isn't.  Try with -crf 10  -b:v 200k to prove yourself wrong.  If you look in the mediainfo of the output file, you won't see anything in the encoder settings except rc=crf  crf=10.0 for rate control.  What you're looking for is -maxrate 10M -bufsize 10M, to use x264's VBV settings to cap bitrate.

We're talking about WebM here. Please refer to this sentence in the ffmpeg guide I linked to in my answer: "there's a constant quality mode (like in the x264 encoder) that will ensure that every frame gets the number of bits it deserves to achieve a certain quality level, rather than forcing the stream to have an average bit rate. This results in better overall quality and should be your method of choice when you encode video with libvpx. In this case, the target bitrate becomes the maximum allowed bitrate."

You can also check by setting a low b:v and trying various crf values. When the CRF value leads to a solution lower than b:v, that's the resultant bitrate, otherwise it's close to the b:v

Oh sorry, I wasn't paying attention, and was thinking about x264.  That's an interesting ratecontrol option.  The OP just has a target filesize, and didn't say anything about what codecs are acceptable.  x264 can beat VP8, so I would go with that.  (VP9 can equal or beat x264, at high-cpu-usage encoding presets, last I read.)


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License Plate enhancement from video
I have a high res video where I'm trying to get the license plate off a black range rover that was used for a robbery.  If anyone has special skills that could get some digits from the plate, it would be greatly appreciated.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B15KCVlLS-cPWTNrQU85c3RLdzg
Thanks.

unlike what you may have seen in CSI, it is not possible to 'add' pixels that don't exist

I'm no expert and I'm not in USA so not familiar with the US plate system, but I've just used VLC player (free download available) with a crop adjustment made top and bottom to allow me to view the center of the video double sized on my monitor, then found a few frames where the plate looks clearest and taken a screen grab and into photoshop to zoom in. Looks to me like the first digit is a 5 and possibly the ending is Z1. It is somewhat fuzzy though, but there do seem to be a few frames where it's a bit clearer. I'd say there are some Cs in the middle or perhaps zeros.

It looks like a California plate so a leading "5" would not be unexpected.


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What computer to buy for PrPro 2015? More GPU than RAM?
My current laptop isn't handling PrPro 2015. Its brand new i7, 12GB RAM, but its not playing video smoothly in the editing process. Looking at buying something more substantial.
Is it true that High performance GPU is better than massive amounts of RAM?  Dose PrPro only take advantage of 10-12GB of Ram and the rest is essentially useless?
The price of some of the high performance gaming desktops I was looking at is between $2000 and $4000, really hoping for some advise before spending so much. As an example; will the specs of the desktop below help me? Will it make the program work faster and not freeze up and skip in the editing process?
What are you guys running? Any recommendations?
Thanks
Clarissa
CyberpowerPC Desktop | Intel Core i7 | 2GB Graphics | Windows 8.1 Professional | Liquid Cooled
Processor & Memory:
◦Intel Core i7-5820K Processor 3.3GHz
◦64GB DDR4 RAM
Drives:
◦2TB 7200RPM SATA3 Hard Drive + 120GB Solid State Drive
◦DVD-RW (Writes to DVD/CD)
Operating System:
◦Microsoft® Windows 8.1 Professional (64-bit)
Graphics & Video:
◦2GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 Graphics
Communications:
◦10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet LAN
Audio:
◦Integrated High Definition 7.1 Channel Audio Processing
Keyboard & Mouse:
◦USB Keyboard
◦USB Mouse
Expandability (Total Slots):
◦2x 5.25" External
◦1x 3.5" External
◦7X 3.5 Internal
◦1x 2.5" Internal
◦4x PCI-E x16
◦2x PCI-E x1
◦8x DIMM 240-pin
I/O Ports & Slots:
◦1x PS/2 Style
◦9x USB 3.0
◦4x USB 2.0
◦1x Optical SPDIF Port
◦1x DVI
◦1x HDMI
◦1x Display Port
◦1x RJ-45
◦5x Audio Jacks (2x Front, 3x Rear)
Additional Information:
•Power Supply: 800 Watt
•Cooling: Liquid Cooled
•Dimensions : 7.5” x 16.7” x 19.3”

silly question but is all your media on a second driver that is not running the OS and PP ? How many streams of video, effects, etc are trying to play at the same time ? have you tried dropping the quality of playback to 50% etc does this make it play better as the spec seems more than my machine and I can run PP, FCPX fine editing wedding videos from a Firewire Ext HDD

did you ever find your solution @clarissa?

My setup: I am running a GTX 760 4gb RAM, i7 3930k overclocked to 4.2ghz (very stable), Sabertooth x79, 800 watt corsair PSU
I once read a really good article and I wish I could find it again to link it, but it basically talked about bottlenecks in an editing system and was supported by actual builds and real world tests. But the just of it was, that unless you are running dual Xenon processors with 64gb RAM the added benefits of a 900+ nvidia gpu was marginal at best. The recommend specs were thus an i7, around 16-32 gb of RAM, SSD's, and GTX 700 series.
This setup works pretty well for me, and I can recommend it. Instead of forking out extra money for the 900 series GPU, get one with more memory and more CUDA cores (something PP really utilizes especially with 3rd party plugins) in the 700 series. Cap the RAM at 32gb unless your going Xenon. But at that point your going to need a GeForce Titan to remove the bottleneck.
I have found that the mercury playback engine with cuda is considerably better at processing frames especially with effects, than the 'program mode' processing.
For reference I can play 85mbps DNX 1080p at full ress with magic bullet looks on with no lag. If I'm running of an external hdd, it takes some time to start the play head once its stopped (less than a second, but enough to annoy). SSD's are a must.

The answer to your question is yes, the desktop with those specs will to increase playback speed with heavier loads over the laptop you currently have because it is a stronger system. It's hard to say if it will remove the glitchyness completely, because that depends on the bit-rate and codec you are using.

Is it true that High performance GPU is better than massive amounts of
  RAM?

Not necessarily. If you routinely work with a codec that is memory intensive, the RAM may well be of more use than large mass of CUDA.'

Dose PrPro only take advantage of 10-12GB of Ram and the rest is
  essentially useless?

Not necessarily, regardless of how much RAM Premiere itself uses the codec may use more and may -as in a case I recently had- be leaky.. I experienced, Very bad timeline playback on my system with 16gb Ram, upgraded to 32GB and am fine. Tech support tells me the Premiere ProRes implementation is leaky..

What are you guys running? Any recommendations?

I currently use a i7-4790, GTX 760-2GB, 32GB RAM, 256 SSD (for OS/Pograms), 2x1TB Samsung SSDs for projects/footage, 2x3TB 7200 segates RAID 0 for Preview files/Final Exports, and misc backup drives.
I spent under $2k for this system a year ago. I edit tv segments with about 10 layers of interment overlays and 2 or 3 overlapping ProRes 422 streams on an on-going basis.
Some thoughts:

Remember CUDA only helps certain functions in Premiere. You can have the fastest video card ever and if your source/previews are sitting on a USB2 5400 drive, you ain't going no-where.
Consider shifting your money from a top end video card to some speedy SSDs and a solid motherboard. All chipsets are not equal for video editing. For me -I like a sexy matx form factor over a huge tower: I would get This ASRock board The newer x99 chipset, the 2011-3 socket -means you can upgrade to xeon 18-cores if you like, and supports 64gb of ecc memory, (BUT you can use that cpu in your list it's solid). Much more useful (to me) than the top of the line Titan or what-have-you CUDA-bucket. You can always upgrade your video card later. (Note: I don't claim it's "the" perfect system -it's what I would get.)
Consider a raid0 or ssd for you preview/render drive. Previews and final exports can always be recreated so the risk of RAID 0 is a low one. Make your preview format a non-compressed format and you will have very high playback bandwidth. It will also speed up your exports somewhat.
Whenever I build a new system I like to what Video Guys currently recommends. Every couple years they research up a new system for DIY Prosumer Editing station: http://www.videoguys.com/blog/computer-hardware/videoguys-april-2015-update-system-recommendations-for-video-editing/ (Note: they tend to get a little dated between times -nice thing is they tested it.)
Consider putting money towards a "nice" monitor like the DELL U2713HM
For those of us that don't have $30k color suites.. get a nice "pre-color calibrated" monitor with high resolution to work that timeline. Or maybe two of them.. It's worth it to be able to tell the client that it's colored properly on a calibrated monitor.


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How to sync the dubbed audio to original video?
I have English movie Die hard in English having total length for example 1hour 30minute original time and dubbed movie length 1hour 28minute.how to equalize both audio.apparently it is impossible. how can i cut original English movie so that i can equalize one video .I can cut but it is difficult to find out from which scene i cut the movie.i want to make dual audio movie.is there any software that can do this?

I've had the same problem where the video and audio were compressed separately and came out with as two different lengths.  Even just a half second difference will mean that the audio at the end of the video will be out of sync a half second.
I don't know what editor you are using, but I'm using Sony Vegas.  So I'll give you the steps for it then just adjust for your editor.

First un-group the audio and video files if they are grouped by pressing U.
Synch up the first sound or word in the video with the audio.  It will be out of sych at the end, but that's okay for now.
Convert the length of the video into seconds and the actual length of the audio into seconds.  For your example you said it was a 90 minute video (5400 seconds) and an 88 minute (5280 second) audio.
Now divide the larger file by the smaller file.  5400/5280 = 1.022727
Now you know that the audio has somehow become 2.2727% shorter somehow.
Now you can right click on the video in your timeline and set the playback rate to .977  - This will shrink your video down to match your audio.


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Delete clips from a video while retaining multiple audio tracks
I have some videos (MP4 or MPV format) that contain muliple language audio tracks (English, French and Spanish). I want to cut out some clips (usually 15-60 seconds at a time) that I feel are inappropriate for my young children, but I want to retain the multiple audio tracks, since I try to immerse my kids in these three languages.
The only commercial video editor I have is Camtasia Studio, but it seems to support only one language track (please correct me if I'm mistaken). I don't want to pay for another video editor just to do this one task. I'm looking for a solution that a free editor can do. I run Windows 8.1.
I would appreciate any pointers. I don't need step-by-step instructions; a recommendation for a suitable editor plus just very high-level instructions should be sufficient. I am willing to convert the video format if necessary to do the job (e.g. using Handbrake).


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Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2015 playback is too fast, renders are regular speed though
Trying to figure out why my playback on the timeline (no matter the sequence settings) is slightly faster. Any possible fixes, or ways to troubleshoot this?

Make sure that there isn't a misconfig of framerate between original media, sequence and export.
Eg: Original 25fps, Sequence at 30fps and exported at 25fps.
In this case the playback would appear faster in premiere, but ok in the exported media.


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Evolving lines with mirror effect
I would like to create evolving lines similar to those in this sequence (starting at 0:28):

I know how to reveal lines, but I struggle to make the line moving so smoothly while continuously increasing its width (narrow at the tip and slowly widening).
Could you please give me some tips on how to do this in After Effects? Thanks!

Should anyone need the same effect, I received quite good advice on CreativeCOW from Mr. Kalle Kannisto: https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/1067004 He said there must be a better way to do this though, so I'm keeping this question open.

Some of the Animation (but not the Lines of which you speak) is Fractal Zooming (like the 'growing Spades'), for example: https://vimeo.com/12185093 and the Lines look like this (modify): https://youtu.be/w-JG1n_Yeo8 -- I'm hoping someone with far more AE experience can mashup those ideas and form a proper answer for you. Other suggestion is look at Credits and see who did the Graphics, maybe the Graphics House prefers particular Tools. It could be hand drawn animation.

Try to use 3d Stroke.

The taper parameter should help you.


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C4D image problems
I have added a custom image from the internet to a cylinder, and it shows up as normal when editing. However when I preview the render or render it out the image completely disappears and the cylinder goes blank, how do I fix this?

Can you explain how you added the image to the cylinder? Did you make a custom material? Maybe provide screenshots. Also this previous question might be relevant.


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Final Cut pro X cropped output media
I've created simple 7 seconds clop which uses standard plugin for FCPX: "Bold Fin" title.
While i am editing this clip - everything fits to the screen:

but when actual file is ready - it seems like it is cropped:

Could somebody please help to find a reason why my output actually cropped? And how fix this issue?

Can you detail the export preset you're using?

Also, it doesn't look like the whole frame is cropped to me. It looks like the animated part has been scaled. I still see the black bar at the bottom in the exported version. Is it possible the animation is in something like a compound clip and the compound clip has some scaling applied?

No, I am not using any compound clips:
https://i.sstatic.net/AJ7DH.png

And here is my sharing settings: Screenshot


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Get rid of loud pops from audio
This is more related to audio than video so I apologize if I posted in the wrong forum. I've prerecorded some podcasts to listen on long drives/flights/trains and for the most part things have been great. I also run them through a normalizer to make sure the sound volume is consistent.
However, some audio files have an occasional pop that goes way above the normal volume and hurts my ears. Since I listen to the audio in my headphones, this is much worse than if my speaker made that noise.
I've tried googling about this but couldn't find much info, so maybe I'm not using the correct name for this phenomenon, it's basically a sudden, loud, and sharp sound that sounds like a balloon popping inside of my head. I was hoping I could use something like Audacity to detect and get rid of it - because detecting them with my own ears doesn't seem to be working too well for me.

You can use Audacity for this purpose, and you can follow this link to learn how: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/tutorial_click_and_pop_removal_techniques.html
Generally, clicks are little bursts of noise (such as a small scratch on a vinyl record), and pops are larger bursts of noise (such as a large scratch or a plosive "P" hitting a microphone without a pop filter).


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How to inserty custom background or second plan footage using dynamic mask in After Effects?
I need to change the sign contents in the clip
The problem is that in some parts gets "blocked" by walking in front of it Minions. How would you solve this challenge?
Screenshots:

Something like that is solved with "Rotoscoping". After Effects has several features that make this process easier. F.e. the "Roto Brush", you can find a tutorial about that here:

https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/roto-brush-refine-matte.html
Then you will have to track the translation and rotation of the sign as its carried around. When you have that you can add a layer that follows the movement of the sign that holds your new content.


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Does using component cable help improve video quality?
I have a standard definition (SD) set top box which has three jacks for its output(Red,white,yellow). I recently bought a Sony TV which has WXGA (1280x800) resolution and 5 jacks for input which has "Component IN" written near the input. I was wondering that , if I use a component cable as a replacement for my existing Red,White,Yellow cable (using the same SetTopBox), will it help to improve the picture quality. The current video quality is not too sharp and has significant motion-blur. I am asking this since the Sony installation guy told me a component cable will provide a better output keeping the same set top box.

The red/white/yellow scheme suggests the usual stereo audio and video composite out. If the STB doesn't support component video output, the cable won't make a difference, unless it has a built in adapter to factor the supplied composite signal into the 3 components. But that's not optimal.

It won't make a difference because your box is SD. No amount of signal inserted in it would make it look HD. To show HD, you need HD ready equipment.

This is simply wrong.  He is not asking if it will make it HD, he is asking if it will improve the quality of the signal.  Separating components of a signal results in more stable transmission than incorporating them in a composite signal, so the quality will, in fact, improve the quality of the feed, especially the longer the run is.  It won't up the resolution unless there was significant deterioration, but it will impact other signal quality issues.


text:
How do I upload video but not have https://
I am trying to put a video in a game.  It requires a link, but the link cannot have HTTPS://  as the start.  It needs the HTTP://
Is there a service that does this?

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because the payload may be video but this is primarily about network communication in a mobile app

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

It does in a browser, however I'm pretty sure Youtube redirects links like that to https, so it might not work with whatever game/app he's building ...

On youtube help for embedding https://developers.google.com/youtube/player_parameters they use plain http://


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Streaming 2 local and some remote players audio issue
I am trying to set up for streaming. Here is what i want to accomplish. I will be the only one streaming video and streaming from the same computer i am playing on. I have a mixer attached to my computer. My wife has a microphone attached to the mixer so that her audio is on the stream. I have some remote players that are going to be on the stream too. So we are using Teamspeak, so everyone's audio is on the stream. My wife and i have to use headphones. Now the problem, i need to be able to hear my wife without her echoing in the stream.
Currently i have her locally muted in Teamspeak. She is not echoing in the stream, but i can't hear her, because i have my headphones on. What can i do to set this up so i can hear everyone, including my wife, with no echo. My wife needs to come through on the stream with the microphone that is attached to the mixer. Not the Teamspeak microphone.
Here is my current set up.
My computer is streaming the content.
My computer has a mixer attached to it.
My computer has a microphone attached to the mixer.
Her computer has a microphone attached to the mixer and a separate microphone used for Teamspeak.
My computer is in Teamspeak.
Her computer is in Teamspeak.
Other people are in Teamspeak.
My computer has "her" locally muted in Teamspeak.
I can't her her, because of headphones and i need to hear her without her echoing in the stream.
Would VAC(virtual audio cable) help me? What do i need to do to solve this issue.
Thanks


text:
Is 0.0036% time inaccuracy on a consumer-grade camcorder expected?
I did an experiment on our church's camcorder (Sony Handycam HDR-CX380) recently to test whether it was the source of a time inaccuracy between our video recordings and PC audio recordings of sermons (see Identifying source of audio drift between camcorder and recording PC).
What I discovered is that video files recorded by the camcorder are about 0.0036% shorter than a stopwatch measurement of the same events. (Example: 3:56:52.81 of stopwatch time led to a file with duration 3:56:52.30.) It's not noticeable when watching the footage on its own, but when I try to match a high-quality audio recording to the video, the bad lip-syncing is noticeable.
Is this kind of inaccuracy in recording times typical for consumer-grade camcorders? Or is our camcorder "broken" even by consumer-grade standards?

How are you recording you audio? most camcorders record audio on 48khz but if your audio recorder is recording in 44.1khz (normal for audio production) then there will be a shift in time?

IME, 0.0036% is rather better than average. Consumer gear operates on quite inexpensive crystal oscillators. These oscillators or crystals are not tuned precisely (or they would cost too much), and they don't have extraordinary stability over temperature ranges.
Professional gear uses special techniques to keep audio and video gear in synchronization.  They use premium-quality sync generators with oscillators that cost more than your whole camera. And even then, they must be re-synchronized several times per day.
And traditional broadcast gear would have a master sync generator, and all the cameras, switcher, etc. would "slave" to that central reference so that everything would be in lock-step.
It sounds like your gear is operating properly. Nothing is "broken". That is simply normal and expected performance.
If you need to sync video to your reference audio track, it is MUCH better to "stretch" or "shrink" the video to fit the audio than vice-versa. Slightly changing the length of the video track with simply insert (or remove) an extra frame every few minutes, which almost nobody will notice.  But slightly changing the length of an audio track is likely to create quite noticable and annoying artifacts.
It is simple enough to try it for yourself. Try slightly changing the length of a long video clip and watch the results.  And then try the same with an audio track. You may be lucky that you can get away with it. Only you can try the experiment with YOUR content and YOUR editing system, and YOUR expectations.

If you are talking about a physical stopwatch I would doubt your ability to make timings in the milliseconds domain with it.
Usually the best way to avoid audio drift when using consumer equipment is to record audio and video together, so a simple solution might be to just feed the audio to your camera.
The problem.with audio drift is sometimes complex, if it is constant, it is easy to fix since you can do a slate at the beginning and end and modify the audio clip to fit the videos length using something like audacity.

Keep in mind that the h.264 codec (seems your camera uses it), although versatile, should only be used for re-viewing purposes. It's not a steady-as-a-rock pro-level codec, one used to record sync sound. It can work, and does (like millions of people, I've used it many times with DSLRs), but in the end be ready for sync issues.
More over, your camera is really low-grade. Use a DSLR instead with an external audio recorder.
I would consider using an external audio recorder with your current camera. Sync the video by using a clap-board or even doing a hand-clap right after the recording has started. Test your setup that way and see what you get. If after trying different permutations you still have sync issues, shoot with something else.


text:
in Premiere CC, how do you create a TALL rectangular mask?
I can create a rectangular mask in Premiere CC, and I can resize it. But how do I change just one dimension (make it more narrow) while keeping the corners at right angles? Dragging a corner point manually probably won't maintain a 90-degree corner.

Finally figured it out (with some help). You can drag a whole side at a time! Here's how:

Click one of the 2 corners to (subtly) select it.
Shift-click-and-drag the other corner.

That will select the whole side between the two corners. It will also limit your "dragging path" to paths that are at 45 degrees or 90 degrees relative to the corner's original position. That enables you to keep your rectangle rectangular.


text:
Home office studio setting to create Calculus videos - Lighting issues
I've been meaning to start creating professional looking Calculus videos for university students and my current setup is the following:

I know what you are thinking, and you are absolutely right: The setup is very amateur.
I would like to create professional videos and my current equipment is a Canon T5i and a 10-18mm Canon lens. I have a whiteboard (1,90m width by 1,20m height) and the distance from the camera to the blackboard is around 1,80m.
The biggest problem is the lighting: it is creating these shadows when I stand next to the whiteboard and, depending on the angle, since the whiteboard is highly reflective, the viewer can see thoss "lighting spots" (please check images attached).

How can I get a quality video on this office? Which lighting setup would help? How would you do that with the least cost?

Thank you.

This earlier Q - http://video.stackexchange.com/questions/2488/video-with-person-writing-on-glass-effect - may provide an alternative.

Lighting a green screen is even harder than lighting a whiteboard.  And performing in front of a green screen also requires practice different than that of writing on a whiteboard.
Here are two alternative strategies which you can possibly blend to taste.  The first, and most obvious, is to get a standard 4'x8' bead board.  Put that board on the wall opposite the white board.  Aim a focused, bright light to fill the 4'x8' bead board.  This will send diffuse light back to the talent and the whiteboard without a specular reflection.  If you need to, you can cheat the bead board to one side or the other so that you don't have a "warm spot" (a very large, diffuse hot-spot) in your whiteboard.  For illumination, start by looking at this ARRI 750W flood and then adjust to your favorite illumination source (LED, HMI, plasma, CFL, etc).  But don't lose focus and barn-door modifiers.  You can also raise the bead board off the floor to span the angle between the rear wall and the ceiling.  You can also place the bead board on the rear ceiling and bounce the lights toward the talent from on high.  The shadows, etc., will tell you how high the bead board needs to be to make everything look right.
The second strategy is to stay with the idea of a pair of side lights, but get a pair of tall vertical light baffles that you can use to completely shade the whiteboard from the lights.  Ideally the shadow pattern is such that the whiteboard itself is shaded from the lights but the talent in front of the whiteboard is not shaded.  Because white is so bright, you actually don't need a ton of light on the whiteboard itself--it will look white when the ambient (ceiling) light hits it.  But you do need light on the talent--skin tones are several stops darker than whiteboard white.  So let your side lights hit the talent and not the whiteboard.
It should be obvious you can combine these two ideas.  Beware of mixing color temperatures (i.e., don't use daylight CFLs for side lights and tungsten lights for the bounce board or things will look weird).

Have you considered not using a whiteboard and instead using graphics for whatever you planned to put on the whiteboard? It will be much clearer and easier to read (assuming you choose your fonts carefully). You could replace the whiteboard with a green screen (which you can get from Amazon for around $15-30US). You'd need to light the green screen evenly, while still lighting yourself.
You don't mention what software you're using. If you're on a Mac, you can use iMovie, which probably came free with your computer (or is < $15US if it didn't), and has a blue/green screen keyer. Then you can use any tool you want to create the text you would have written on the whiteboard and save it as an image to import into iMovie. I'm sure there are low-cost tools on other OSes, if you need them, but I'm not as familiar with them as I am with Mac software.

do you mean this effect friend? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xOkUZcWCJM

Yes, something like that. Personally, I think he has way too much text in the frame, and he should get the microphone out of the frame. But that's the basic idea. And while @Michael_Tiemann is correct that lighting a green screen can be hard, remember that you can garbage matte out parts that are uneven. Overall, getting the lighting right as he suggests is a great idea. But your handwriting better be impeccable if you're going to write things on a white board!


text:
Is possible to use ffmpeg to capture directly a DSLR streaming via USB?
If i have an high end Canon or Nikon camera is possible to do what eos_movrec do but with a better quality? Could be useful to use this for streaming or recording purposes.
And in case of something available, is also possible to tune the config on the fly?

This reply - http://stackoverflow.com/a/31174822 - shows a way to do it with some Sony cameras.

@Mulvya The Problem with that answer is that rely on the fact that Sony Cameras have an api and a streaming server ready to give you a stream of Motion JPG sequence. Then, the thing you do with ffmpeg is grab that stream and do something else with it. I would like doing this with Canon Cameras DLSR like a 5D Mark II or 5D Mark III. Would be very cool for all the Video Production community to find a solution for it ;)

How about this one - http://digicamcontrol.com/feature-list

@Mulvya indeed is a software I'm actually testing, it gives you a streamserver on http://127.0.0.1:5513/liveview.html?CMD=LiveViewWnd_Show , the stream resource looks like a jpg file that follows with a random number in the back in order to prevent the caching. There's a way ffmpeg can grab this "stream of data" and transcode, restream or whatever? Would be cool have many answer on this discussion with each possible alternative, in order to leave something very informative for people with the same needings.


text:
Video not catching up with words. After upload on youtube
I just uploaded a lyric video but it seems that Its lagging behind. Like for example. the song "ABC", It will play "ABCDE," then "FGHIJ" will allready be sung next but its still on the words "ABCDE" for a good 5 seconds before it moves on to "FGHIJ" of which of course the song would have allready moved on to "KLMNO". The problem is it plays perfectly on time in Windows Live Movie Maker. But when i uploaded it to youtube I get a laggy mess lol. I deleted the video twice. it is still deleted. I'm not putting it back up till i figure out how to fix it. I have 47 videos on my channel and never had any issues with them. So what gives?
UPDATE: I just realized its not catching up as well in Movie Maker but only when I rewind it back a little then play it, it plays correctly.. Since it played back correctly when I was first making it before upload I just thought that was just some sort of glitch and ignored it. And didn't think it would effect my video drastically...

Have you checked the video in VLC media player or another video player after export? Did the video have issues as well? It's unlikely that Youtube caused this error. What's more likely is your audio and video get out of sync over time because the audio uses another framerate than the video .. check that first.

Just to clear that up, of course audio doesn't have a framerate, but it's sample rate relates to the video's frame rate in a certain way that, if the software misinterprets it, can lead to video and audio being played back at slightly different speeds which can cause both to become out of sync. All of this is pretty complicated and I can't explain it well (tbh I have a hard time wrapping my head around it as well), however the bottom line is I've had this problem a long time ago when I tried WMM and it can be fixed by using editing software that doesn't suck (as opposed to Windows Movie Maker)


text:
Looking for suggestions on workflow/equipment: daily production of short presentation videos
i am looking for any and all sort of suggestions on workflow and equipment, specifically camcorder choice.
Case details:

We are producing short videos every day. A person is standing in front
  of a big LCD TV and talking to computer pre-generated graphics. The
  recordings are generally one minute long. This is shot in a really tiny
  room, with two tungsten video lights that we already have in place.
After recording, the material needs to be taken to a room 200 meters
  away, and slightly edited in Sony Vegas on a Win 7 PC, before being
  rendered to some sort of delivery format for our customers. typically
  "mp4". We are shooting and/or delivering in either 1280x720 or
  1920x1080.

I will be needing a camcorder, and some sort of lavallier mic, and a means to connect them. I am thinking of a lower end prosumer HD camcorder, maybe like Sony HDR-PJ810 or Canon Legria HF G25.
A DLSR could maybe be slightly cheaper, but are there any benefits? The "film-like" ideal that is prevalent with DLSRs today really isn't a goal here - we'd rather want long DOF, than shallow.

How would you go on and set this up, considering it needs to be done on a daily basis, and preferably by one sole person? (the
presenter is doing the recording)
Is there something that can be done to avoid having to take an SD
card out of the camera, and run away with that each day? Any
practical network solutions that won't be twice the price of my
camcorder?

Cheers

There are camcorders that enable full-res uploads of their memory cards via WiFi.  Thus, if your room has connectivity to your intranet, you can leave the card in the camcorder, hit upload when you are done, turn the camera off when the upload is done, do your customer edits and uploads, then wipe the card for the next day's work, all without walking 200 meters away.
This $330 camera might do all you need: Canon VIXIA HF R60.
But any camera with WiFi upload capabilities will do--it's just a question of features, color matrix preferences, and cost.


text:
Premiere failing to export long video "file does not exist" error
I'm trying to export a long (2h20m) video interview from Premiere CC 2015 on a mac for translation purposes.
The source video is ProRes 422 mov files
I'm adding timecode & source file name effects as overlays
The export is to h264, Vimeo preset.
I've tried HD 1920x1080p, and SD 480p
Every time, the export fails with the error "file does not exist".
See screen shots:

Looks like a bug. Might be a good idea to report it: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/878528, https://bugbase.adobe.com/

Try doing it as a two-step process:

Export your movie with the identical format as your sequence, using a reasonable high-quality ProRes format as your output (so you don't suffer much the damage of double-compression)
Compress the output of Step 1 into the format and codec you like

Premiere Pro and Adobe Media Encoder have all kinds of problems right now, and not only with El Capitan.  Many others have hit the same glitch you have, both on Yosemite and El Capitan, with or without hardware rendering.  CC2015 has been a big disappointment to many.

If the OP is willing to use an external encoder then using a frameserver from within Premiere will save him one encoding pass i.e. the export from out of Premiere. This is a frameserver that I've used - http://www.debugmode.com/frameserver/


text:
What kind of external microphone can I use with my Galaxy smartphone?
I'm feeling a bit stupid.
I want to make video podcasts using my Samsung Galaxy S3 but of course the internal mic isn't much good.
So i need an external mic.
Can I use pretty much any battery-powered mic and plug it into my phone (maybe needs an adapter?)
I bought an Edutige ETM 001 but it wasn't compatible. I'm told i need an Edutige EIM 001 but I'm in Asia at the moment and can't find one here...
I'd be grateful for your help!

Consider a couple of products from Australian microphone maker Røde.

Røde VideoMic Me: http://en.rode.com/microphones/videomicme
Røde smartLav+: http://en.rode.com/microphones/smartlav-plus

Røde makes pretty high-quality products and are leaders in making new products like these mcicrophones which are designed to plug directly into the TRRS connectors of smartphones.
I have no connection with Røde except as a satisfied, paying customer.

A compressor microphone that worked for me is the Arcano Black 01/Arcano bku-01 (those are hard to find,but they are SUPER GOOD!).Also you could go for the iRig Mic Studio,I dont know if this one works on galaxy but its a great mic!Also the iRig come with a free app to record multiple sound sources,and that is pretty handy since you are going to make a podcast.
Anyways,good luck in your podcast!

If you want to record really good quality audio on an android smartphone (requires your phone to have USB OTG) is using an external USB soundcard like the art dual pre USB (or a any other supported soundcards) and an app called usb Audio recorder pro...
http://www.extreamsd.com/index.php/products/usb-audio-recorder-pro
With that solution you have an 80$ semi-professional sound recording solution with Phantom power etc.
Advantage is that you can use any microphone on the market with your phone.

I think you can probably get any microphone that can go into an audio slot.

This answer is not helpful because the user has already made it clear they cannot derive a specific answer from a general question.  A helpful answer would be a specific microphone recommendation that actually works with the Galaxy smartphone in question, plus some additional detail about how to then generalize that answer to other microphone options (that might be higher performance, lower cost, more readily available, etc).


text:
Imported sequence from Premiere Pro CS6 missing shots once in AE CS6
I am importing a sequence from Premiere Pro into After Effects (by clicking on Import -> Premiere Pro), but there's a very annoying gap in A.E. where shots haven't been imported.
Here's the Premiere Pro Project - as you can see there are no gaps:

Here's the timeline in A.E. after import:

Note the huge gap between two files.
The files in this project are from different cameras, and it looks like some harmless .mov files are the ones missing in that gap.
I scrolled down thinking they might have been added as layers further down, but they are nowhere.
I have done this in the past in extremely similar ways, and never had this problem.


text:
GoPro4: Color shifts in video
I'm not sure where to put this question, but I think signal processing section is the best section to ask.
So I am having a problem with my camera, apparently the filter color shifts to purple, then green, then back to normal while recording. The camera also showed many grains despite the 1080p resolution.
Is there something wrong with the Image Processing Unit? Should I replace it? I don't think it's lens problem though. I just replaced the motherboard but it didn't solve the problem. Btw, the camera has fell over from a car once and is out of warranty.
Thanks in advance.

Can you post a link to a clip showing the issue? It's hard to diagnose without seeing the actual problem.

I've seen something similar once. After a point-and-shoot camera got wet.

I can't upload my photo right now, but it should look similar to this.


text:
What video formats/codecs should a video editing software aimed at beginners/semi-pros definitely support
I have a video editing software which current supports only MP4/H264 as the videos that can be imported into the system. I wanted to expand this and was investigating into the different popular formats out there.
My tool is meant to make video authoring simpler and tries to achieves that with a doing away with pro-level features. I have basic editing features like trimming, filters, annotations etc.  My target audience are everyday consumers like teachers, entrepreneurs, trainers etc. who might have a video creation need and can't afford time to learn or money to pay for a pro software.
So, in your opinion, which are the video formats I should definitely support for importing over and above MP4/H26 given my customer base? I personally felt that MP4 is very restrictive and wanted to expand over it.

To be frank, beginners and semi-pros will be capturing their videos on smartphones or consumer-level camcorders. And contemporary ones all record their videos as H264 in MP4 or MOV. The only other candidate is MJPEG in AVI for videos taken with older devices
If it's legally possible, I'd suggest bundling Avisynth along with your software and coding AVS/AVI import into your tool. There are plugins for Avisynth which handle many other formats. To make it somewhat transparent and simple for users, your menu should contain two entries: 'Open MP4' which handles native import of MP4, as it presumably does right now, and something like 'Open other formats', which when presented with a heterogeneous format, constructs a simple Avisynth script on the fly and executes it, without the knowledge of the user. This way your users don't need to know scripting and your app now accepts many other formats.

I understand that recorded videos from devices are mostly H264 in MP4/MOV and hence we went ahead with MP4, but sometimes I might want to import videos others created which could be in various formats. Hence I was working on deciding the set of formats I want to import.

Videos are generated via recording or rendering or transcoding. We already agree on the de facto format (MP4/MOV) fior the first case. Most NLE render output is the same. Maybe WMV for Windows Movie Maker. Professional intermediate codecs like ProRes, DNxHD, Cineform or MXF Op1a aren't relevant for your target userbase. And I doubt most amateurs transcode to anything other than MP4/MOV or AVI.

WMV, AVI, MP4/MOV were what I had in mind when I asked this question. Now that you put it in terms of the source of video generation, these formats make more sense to me as well. I wanted to ensure I am not missing out on any format which are popularly used and I am not aware of.


text:
How actually RTMP work
I'm not a video expert but what I understand about RTMP that it work in the following manner :
Video Source -> MP4 Container -> FLV Container -> RTMP Container -> Propagate through internet -> RTMP Server
I'm an android developer and I need to create a program which can take frames from device camera and transmit them to RTMP server.
For this first I need to understand how actually RTMP works.
Can someone please explain what should I do with the RAW camera frames and how should I prepare them to propagate through RTMP channel.
I'm using wowza server for this setup.
I just need the workflow no need of code (I'll be great if you can provide :) ).
Thanks


text:
Video and Telemetrics not in sync
I've recorded a video with Raspberry Pis Camera Module.
On top of that I've recorded GPS data including the GPS Timestamp and made my own data file.
Using Dashware I've tried to get the video and telemetrics in sync.
Unfortunately it just wont't work as the datafile runs much faster than the video file. In the end there is ~1,5 hours that are not covered with data.
My question is:
What is best practice in order to get the video and data in sync?

Where did the time information come from for the data file? If you have actual time stamps, do they agree with the duration of the video?

The time information hence the timestamps came from a gps module. So its supposed to be accurate. Yes they do agree with the duration of the video.
I guess it might be the speed of processing the data rows. The timestamps have different lags inbetween them. Probably dashware runs lets say one row per second although the real time difference between every row is higher than that. As I dont know how Dashware processes the rows, its hard to find a fix for that. Maybe though there is a function that dashware recognizes the timestamp and calculates the delay before the next row gets processed.


text:
Adding annotation to existing video file
I an application demo video, I want to add annotations (Text notes, basic shapes etc) on already recorded video. Is there any free software available for that on Windows?
I found some, but they work on desktop screen capturing... but I want to work on existing video. I tried with Youtube. I'm able to add annotations but if I download the video from YouTube, they are not there / or downloaded as separate file. I need single video file with my annotation added to the same.

Take a look at Blender or Lightworks (both free).
You can import footage and add text or shapes (simple one with Lightworks) to it.


text:
Animate a path from Adobe Illustrator in Adobe Premiere Pro
i am wondering if it is possible to animate a path (such as a christmas tree) i created in Illustrator in Premiere Pro? I was thinking about a glowing path which slowly goes around the scheme of the tree.
Like this: http://www.desktopwallpaper4.me/holidays/glowing-christmas-tree-2589/


text:
ffmpeg - Specify FC (center) instead of mono
I am trying to specify a single mono channel to be named 'Center' when viewed in Quicktime player, I know that technically specifying FC is mono, but in my user case I need it to actually be named 'Center', not 'Mono'. Is there someone who would kindly help me resolve this issue please, as I have searched everywhere to keep this work inside of ffmpeg without having to resort to a 3rd party application. I am used to applying ffmpeg patches, so if there is anyone who could easily write a patch, that would be amazing and very much appreciated. So I am specifying the 3rd audio channel to be labeled 'FC', so when viewing the file in Quicktime player, I want it to be labeled as 'center', not 'mono'. All the other channel labels are coming out named as I have specified, so I just want the center to come out. Here is my code, you'll see what I am trying to achieve:
ffmpeg -i /Users/kev/Movies/Test_descrete.mov -ss 45 -to 50 -filter_complex \
> "[0:1]pan=FL|c0=c0[FL]; \
>  [0:1]pan=FR|c0=c1[FR]; \
>  [0:1]pan=FC|c0=c2[FC]; \
>  [0:1]pan=LFE|c0=c3[LFE]; \
>  [0:1]pan=BL|c0=c4[BL]; \
>  [0:1]pan=BR|c0=c5[BR]; \
>  [0:1]pan=DL+DR|c0=c6|c1=c7[stereo]" \
> -map v:0 \
> -map "[FL]" \
> -map "[FR]" \
> -map "[FC]" \
> -map "[LFE]" \
> -map "[BL]" \
> -map "[BR]" \
> -map "[stereo]" \
> -vcodec prores -profile:v 3 -vtag apcn -f mov -y -c:a pcm_s24le /Users/kev/Movies/5_1_Sterero.mov
ffmpeg version 2.8.1-tessus Copyright (c) 2000-2015 the FFmpeg developers
  built with Apple LLVM version 6.0 (clang-600.0.57) (based on LLVM 3.5svn)
  configuration: --cc=/usr/bin/clang --prefix=/opt/ffmpeg --as=yasm --extra-version=tessus --enable-avisynth --enable-fontconfig --enable-gpl --enable-libass --enable-libbluray --enable-libfreetype --enable-libgsm --enable-libmodplug --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-libopus --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libsoxr --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libvidstab --enable-libvo-aacenc --enable-libvo-amrwbenc --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-libwavpack --enable-libx264 --enable-libx265 --enable-libxavs --enable-libxvid --enable-libzmq --enable-version3 --disable-ffplay --disable-indev=qtkit --disable-indev=x11grab_xcb
  libavutil      54. 31.100 / 54. 31.100
  libavcodec     56. 60.100 / 56. 60.100
  libavformat    56. 40.101 / 56. 40.101
  libavdevice    56.  4.100 / 56.  4.100
  libavfilter     5. 40.101 /  5. 40.101
  libswscale      3.  1.101 /  3.  1.101
  libswresample   1.  2.101 /  1.  2.101
  libpostproc    53.  3.100 / 53.  3.100
Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from '/Users/kev/Movies/Test_descrete.mov':
  Metadata:
    major_brand     : qt
    minor_version   : 537199360
    compatible_brands: qt
    creation_time   : 2015-10-17 18:55:33
  Duration: 00:01:58.04, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 170075 kb/s
    Stream #0:0(eng): Video: prores (apch / 0x68637061), yuv422p10le, 1920x1080, 160844 kb/s, 24 fps, 24 tbr, 24 tbn, 24 tbc (default)
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2015-10-17 18:55:33
      handler_name    : Apple Alias Data Handler
      encoder         : Apple ProRes 422 HQ
    Stream #0:1(eng): Audio: pcm_s24le (lpcm / 0x6D63706C), 48000 Hz, 8 channels (FL+FR+FC+LFE+SL+SR+DL+DR), s32 (24 bit), 9216 kb/s (default)
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2015-10-17 19:13:26
      handler_name    : Apple Alias Data Handler
[Parsed_pan_6 @ 0x7f8d30419900] Pure channel mapping detected: 6 7
[Parsed_pan_5 @ 0x7f8d304196c0] Pure channel mapping detected: 5
[Parsed_pan_4 @ 0x7f8d304193c0] Pure channel mapping detected: 4
[Parsed_pan_3 @ 0x7f8d30419080] Pure channel mapping detected: 3
[Parsed_pan_2 @ 0x7f8d30418d40] Pure channel mapping detected: 2
[Parsed_pan_1 @ 0x7f8d30418a20] Pure channel mapping detected: 1
[Parsed_pan_0 @ 0x7f8d304182c0] Pure channel mapping detected: 0
Output #0, mov, to '/Users/kev/Movies/5_1_Sterero.mov':
  Metadata:
    major_brand     : qt
    minor_version   : 537199360
    compatible_brands: qt
    encoder         : Lavf56.40.101
    Stream #0:0(eng): Video: prores (apch) (apch / 0x68637061), yuv422p10le, 1920x1080, q=2-31, 200 kb/s, 24 fps, 12288 tbn, 24 tbc (default)
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2015-10-17 18:55:33
      handler_name    : Apple Alias Data Handler
      encoder         : Lavc56.60.100 prores
    Stream #0:1: Audio: pcm_s24le (in24 / 0x34326E69), 48000 Hz, 1 channels (FL), s32, 1152 kb/s (default)
    Metadata:
      encoder         : Lavc56.60.100 pcm_s24le
    Stream #0:2: Audio: pcm_s24le (in24 / 0x34326E69), 48000 Hz, 1 channels (FR), s32, 1152 kb/s
    Metadata:
      encoder         : Lavc56.60.100 pcm_s24le
    Stream #0:3: Audio: pcm_s24le (in24 / 0x34326E69), 48000 Hz, mono, s32, 1152 kb/s
    Metadata:
      encoder         : Lavc56.60.100 pcm_s24le
    Stream #0:4: Audio: pcm_s24le (in24 / 0x34326E69), 48000 Hz, 1 channels (LFE), s32, 1152 kb/s
    Metadata:
      encoder         : Lavc56.60.100 pcm_s24le
    Stream #0:5: Audio: pcm_s24le (in24 / 0x34326E69), 48000 Hz, 1 channels (BL), s32, 1152 kb/s
    Metadata:
      encoder         : Lavc56.60.100 pcm_s24le
    Stream #0:6: Audio: pcm_s24le (in24 / 0x34326E69), 48000 Hz, 1 channels (BR), s32, 1152 kb/s
    Metadata:
      encoder         : Lavc56.60.100 pcm_s24le
    Stream #0:7: Audio: pcm_s24le (in24 / 0x34326E69), 48000 Hz, downmix, s32, 2304 kb/s
    Metadata:
      encoder         : Lavc56.60.100 pcm_s24le
Stream mapping:
  Stream #0:1 (pcm_s24le) -> pan (graph 0)
  Stream #0:1 (pcm_s24le) -> pan (graph 0)
  Stream #0:1 (pcm_s24le) -> pan (graph 0)
  Stream #0:1 (pcm_s24le) -> pan (graph 0)
  Stream #0:1 (pcm_s24le) -> pan (graph 0)
  Stream #0:1 (pcm_s24le) -> pan (graph 0)
  Stream #0:1 (pcm_s24le) -> pan (graph 0)
  Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (prores (native) -> prores (native))
  pan (graph 0) -> Stream #0:1 (pcm_s24le)
  pan (graph 0) -> Stream #0:2 (pcm_s24le)
  pan (graph 0) -> Stream #0:3 (pcm_s24le)
  pan (graph 0) -> Stream #0:4 (pcm_s24le)
  pan (graph 0) -> Stream #0:5 (pcm_s24le)
  pan (graph 0) -> Stream #0:6 (pcm_s24le)
  pan (graph 0) -> Stream #0:7 (pcm_s24le)
Press [q] to stop, [?] for help
frame=   14 fps=1.1 q=-0.0 size=   10567kB time=00:00:01.00 bitrate=86563.8kbitsframe=   26 fps=2.0 q=-0.0 size=   23341kB time=00:00:01.50 bitrate=127471.3kbitframe=   38 fps=2.8 q=-0.0 size=   36133kB time=00:00:02.00 bitrate=148002.7kbitframe=   49 fps=3.4 q=-0.0 size=   47881kB time=00:00:02.50 bitrate=156896.6kbitframe=   59 fps=4.0 q=-0.0 size=   58482kB time=00:00:02.52 bitrate=190012.1kbitframe=   70 fps=4.6 q=-0.0 size=   70029kB time=00:00:03.00 bitrate=191226.8kbitframe=   81 fps=5.1 q=-0.0 size=   81443kB time=00:00:03.50 bitrate=190623.1kbitframe=   92 fps=5.6 q=-0.0 size=   92871kB time=00:00:04.00 bitrate=190199.1kbitframe=  103 fps=6.1 q=-0.0 size=  104378kB time=00:00:04.50 bitrate=190015.0kbitframe=  115 fps=6.6 q=-0.0 size=  116801kB time=00:00:05.00 bitrate=191366.2kbitframe=  120 fps=6.8 q=-0.0 Lsize=  125425kB time=00:00:05.00 bitrate=205496.6kbits/s
video:119787kB audio:5625kB subtitle:0kB other streams:0kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead: 0.010789%


text:
Rendered File with After Effects is very Huge
I'm trying to create a video with After Effects CC 2015.
I'm really new in video creation and need to render this template project.
It is 8 minutes long and 1440x1080 pixels.
When I try to render it with format:Quicktime and codec:H264
result is a 11 gb file.
I'm not even sure if it is normal. But I guess it should be much less ?
I can put screenshots for setting windows and any window necessary.
I'd be really happy if someone can guide me in this because I need to perform this without spending too much time learning to learn AE fully.
Thanks a lot

Welcome Null Pointer :) For a solid answer a bit more context is required. What you are trying to achieve is missing here. Anyway, enjoy video.se and start with the tour to get your first badge ;)

Please see my instructions in the following thread: http://video.stackexchange.com/q/16903/1871

Short Answer
It's all codec related, AE export follows the direction and settings you give him.
Your choice could be to export a super high bitrate lossless file or a few kb crappy thing horrible to see.
You say h264, probably you used an high bitrate, that could be good but better at this point go for an Intermediate use codec keeping h264 for the final distribution.

Long Answer
It's all depending the workflow you want to follow!
My workflow generally consists in export the render with a true lossless (or if not possibile at least visually speaking lossless) very high bitrate codec in order to have a decent master.
Then i use that master to export the copies in the format i want with a tool like ffmpeg that is a super powerful command line tool that allows you to do all the transcoding and compression job.
Pros

You will not need to re-render again the AE Project saving tons of time.
You will not have troubles expecially as early user for not knowing too much about codec and settings. Compress in a lossy codec while rendering must have first of all a reason (like one only in my life render, target and never use the video again for something else) but also require knowledge obtained by lot of trial and errors that a pro have. If you start with a lossy codec in the rendering phase and you misconfig the settings you will end in a crappy file not good at all!

Cons

Video files will be bigger, but if you have at least a handy external drive all will be easier a nas could be better if you plan to grow and use this workflow for work.

Export your AE render with a Very High quality codec suited for post production or that could retain as much info as possible example a QuickTime movie contianer with Apple ProRes or Avid DNxHD 120 or 185 Mbit/s.
Store your file and use something like:
ffmpeg -i rendered.mov -c:v libx264 -crf 18 -c:a libfdk_aac -b:a 192k compressed.mp4

To obtain a smaller compressed version of your movie.
If you already exported with AE the audio in aac or a format you would like to keep use
ffmpeg -i rendered.mov -c:v libx264 -crf 18 -c:a copy compressed.mp4

Note: If you download the ffmpeg binaries for windows normally the libfdk_aac is not available, so you could use: libfaac or aac or libvo_aacenc


text:
Show audio waveform in FCP video?
How can I show the audio waveform in a video similar to the one below?

I'm using Final Cut Pro X on OS X 10.10 Yosemite.

Possible duplicate of: http://video.stackexchange.com/questions/9644/how-do-i-turn-audio-into-video-that-is-show-the-waveforms-in-a-video

That 'duplicate' doesn't answer my question, hence why I asked another one.


text:
Why is the alignment setting disabled on my Constant Power audio transition?
Can anyone tell me what would be causing me to not be able to set the Alignment property on a Constant Power audio transition?
I'm not sure what other information is relevant for this question as I am quite new to Adobe Premiere Pro CC.

I am using Adobe Premiere Pro CC 7.2.2

I had the same issue. For me, there was a very small gap between the 2 clips, which was not visible until I expanded the time sequence to a greater extent. Once I remove the gap between clips, alignment got enabled for me

I think this is happening because you do not have enough material in one of your two clips to make a crossfade between your two clips.  Try overlapping the clips further, then applying a crossfade, and see if this fixes it, or make the duration of your crossfade shorter.


text:
How can I ensure that DaVinci Resolve will detect and/or load my .mp4 / .avi files?
New user of DaVinci Resolve, explain-like-I'm-five. =)
Have installed and followed instructions for setting up Resolve 12 on my Windows 7 16gb ram computers with GeForce 760 gpu.
Initially, Resolve would not recognise my .mp4 / .avi files, only finding single image files. The .mp4 and .avi files will load and run in VLC and / or Blender.
I restarted the program, at which point it could find the files - but the thumbnails for the files were red with an exclamation mark and would not load. There were a couple which displayed correct thumbnails, but on clicking on the files the thumbnails turned to red with exclamation mark - and would not load.
Restarting my computer and reloading Resolve returned me to my initial condition: Resolve would not recognise my .mp4 / .avi files, only finding single image files.
These are files of mostly less than 100mb each, some only lasting for a couple of minutes.
Does anybody know why Resolve can't detect or load my files?
--Rev

The exclamation mark behaviour sounds like codec issues. Which version of Quicktime is installed? Any other codec packs installed?

QuickTime Player is at 7.7.8 and is constantly updated by Apple's updating software. I have some codec packs installed for FFmpeg, though I couldn't really name them. Can you recommend something that should be installed for Resolve?

What does codec packs installed for ffmpeg mean? Or did you mean ffdshow?

From your post I am not sure why Resolve wont recognize your files...but you should transcode your footage anyways before ingesting into Resolve.
Even if you start with highly compressed source media, you should transcode to something less compressed, and that will put you in 4:2:2 at least vs working with 4:0:0. ProRes or DNxHD codec will give you files that are much less compressed, and will yield the best possible results in color correction.

Could you please be a little more prescriptive? What programs should I use for this? What file types? Again, explain-like-I'm-five. =) Thank you!

Adobe Pr/Ae & Resolve - '15 Mac Pro.
Even if media comes in compressed, I transcode w/ Prelude/Media Encoder - usually to ProRes 422, which is a low compression codec. Just like RAW & JPEG files; ProRes files are larger than mp4s for the same footage, but your comp easily reads all the information for playback without having to decompress. Codecs like ProRes use a color subsampling method that essentially records more info about the colors as it writes them; more information on the colors in your footage, the more malleable, and more options in color correction.
Bit depth is also a factor.

Davinci Resolve does not support all common video file formats, unfortunately. It tends to emphasize the more professional codecs and those found in recent digital cameras.
You can view the full list of file formats supported in Resolve version 15 here:
https://documents.blackmagicdesign.com/SupportNotes/DaVinci_Resolve_15_Supported_Codec_List.pdf
You'll notice that in this list:

For AVI - only Cineform and uncompressed formats are supported
For MP4 - only H.264 and H.265 formats are supported

If your video is not one of those formats, unfortunately you need to convert it into a supported format – formats like DNxHD or ProRes are high-quality and good for editing. Tools like VirtualDub2 or FFMPEG (if you don't mind using the command line) will be helpful. There should be many tutorials on the web for using those to convert between formats.
(As an aside, it would be great if you could frameserve videos into Resolve, but I haven't seen anyone mention that that's supported.)


text:
Advantage of HLS/HDS over direct bytestream
I've been becoming familiar with a lot of streaming protocols in the past few years, but now that I ask myself, I don't know what are the advantages of protocols such as HLS or HDS which chunk the stream compared to a direct-from-memory bytestream like HTTP octet-stream, RTMP or RTSP can do for example.
I would think that the I/O necessary to produce the fragments makes it less efficient and, for HLS, TCP already insures data reliability, so is it not redundant to use an MPEG Transport-Stream over TCP?

CDNs. CDNs make delivering small static HTTP objects much cheeper due caching efficiency, supply and demand, and stateless servers (hence more viewers per server). Second is live video. HTTP does not really work well given a file of infinite length. Hence breaking the stream into segments to make the CDNs job easier.

interesting comment about caching, but couldn't you theoretically cache fixed-length segments of the bytestream in the RAM of your CDN's proxies or just stream from the streaming server continuously to the proxies and then the proxies would forward the stream to the client? Also, could you explain a little more about why HTTP doesn't work well for live streaming?

Yes, you could do that. But that is a second technology that needs to be developed deployed and maintained. CDNs will charge a premium for that effort. In fact you can get RTMP services from CDNs, but it costs more per bit delivered. HTTP servers work best when they know the length of the asset before it is sent. A live stream has an undefined length. So its more difficult to manage. This is why video are broken into segments of known size.

I see, very interesting, I didnt't know about the costs. Is that the reason why RTMP has basically died in the last 2-3 years? As for HTTP, yes, I was just thinking of a custom client not something generic, you are right. Upvoted your answer, but don't know if you can see it (don't have 15 rep here).

This plus the stateless nature of HTTP makes it easier to achieve higher throughput per physical server.

RTMP is also dying as it is a Flash based technology, and flash does not work on mobile.

true... I was unable to play RTMFP streams for an Android application using Flash 11.1 :(


text:
ffmpeg: overlay rotated video with transparency
I'm new to ffmpeg (video encoding in general).
I have two videos one larger than the other. I want to rotate, resize and overlay the shorter video on the larger one at defined coordinates.
So far, I'm doing this:

Add alpha channel to both the videos: ffmpeg -i demo.mov -vcodec qtrle -pix_fmt argb demo.mov
Define fadein, fadeout, scale, overlay, perspective and rotation then output the video: ffmpeg -y -i demo.mov -i demo2.mov -filter_complex  "[1:v] fade=in:10:1:alpha=1, fade=out:500:1:alpha=1, scale=80:80, perspective=x0=0:y0=0:x1=W:y1=40, rotate=-0.1745:c=none [ov]; [0:v][ov] overlay=100:100 [v]" -map "[v]" out.mov

In this process, I'm facing a few problems:

Am I adding alpha channels the right way?
The final output has flickering background in the place where the rotated video has margins.
The overlay remains a square. I do not want it to be square, but of the dimension specified by perspective filter.

Some of the parameters in the above commands (such as perspective,fade) are arbitrary.
To give a better perspective of what I'm trying to do: trying to add a video as though it was being played on a phone that is moving.
I have asked about problems on IRC and got this far. I don't know how to proceed from here.
Here is the output: https://youtu.be/yd4UWq5NO5M
Any help would be great.

Can you upload the raw inputs?

@Mulvya Sure. http://download.wavetlan.com/SVV/Media/HTTP/H264/Talkinghead_Media/H264_test1_Talkinghead_mov_480x360.mov
I'm using the same source for both - background and overlay for convenience.

I added alpha channel on this input.

I'll have a closer look later, but there is no alpha channel. The pixel format is yuv420p. Mind you, you don't need an alpha channel for what you're trying to do. In any case, what would the alpha channel be populated with?

Also, since you're "trying to add a video as though it was being played on a phone that is moving", this is best done in a compositing app with a tracker. Look into Natron - http://natron.fr/ or Fusion - https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/in/products/fusion if you're looking for a free solution. else After Effects.

Why I add alpha channel: when I tried to overlay the video without alpha channel, a black background remained when I faded it out. Adding alpha channel removed it. So, I'm adding the channel so that there are no remains of the overlay when it fades out.
I need to integrate this functionality into my app, so not using third party solutions is nicer :)

No need for alpha channel. Your last filter should be [0:v][ov] overlay=100:100:eof_action=pass [v]

Yep! That worked! Now I don't have to worry about large sized intermediate videos. Thanks!
However the flickering issue is still there.

The weird thing is the flickering almost completely vanishes if I perform the task in two commands i.e. one ffmpeg command to output a MOV with the transformed video with the fades and one command to perform the overlay of that MOV on top of the original. But the identical filterchain for the first step when integrated into a single command, gives flickering.

I have tried multiple videos. All have been giving the flickering. I haven't tried separating the filter chains though.

Try this for the first command :  ffmpeg -y -i "input.mov" -vf "format=bgra, perspective=x0=0:y0=0:x1=W:y1=180, fade=in:10:1:alpha=1, fade=out:200:1:alpha=1, scale=-1:80, rotate=-0.1745:c=none:ow=rotw(iw):oh=roth(ih)" -c:v qtrle output.mov

And 2nd: ffmpeg -y -i "input.mov" -i "output.mov" -filter_complex "[0:v][1:v] overlay=100:100:eof_action=pass [v]" -map "[v]" final_out.mov

Flickering a lot. Here: https://youtu.be/ZzLBVRGfn60

Let me check here again.

Breaking the process into two steps worked for me.
See my output using the commands below at http://sendvid.com/g56xjz04
The commands I used:
ffmpeg -y -i "video for overlay.mov" -vf "format=bgra, perspective=x0=0:y0=0:x1=W:y1=180, fade=in:10:1:alpha=1, fade=out:200:1:alpha=1, scale=-1:80, rotate=-0.1745:c=none:ow=rotw(-0.1745):oh=roth(-0.1745)" -c:v qtrle overlay.mov

ffmpeg -y -i "base.mov" -i "overlay.mov" -filter_complex "[0:v][1:v] overlay=100:100:eof_action=pass [v]" -map "[v]" final_out.mov

I suspect that in the single command complex filterchain, there is some bug or nuance regarding the alpha channel operations that is generating a garbled alpha channel.
If you need a single command, I think your best way forward is to submit a bug report to the ffmpeg team, including the commands and output of both the single command and two-step process.

Also, ensure that you're using the latest or a fairly recent ffmpeg build.

I just tested the two commands with these versions: N-76452-ga97f1e7 and N-76045-g97be5d4. Can you tell me which version you are using? Because I'm still getting the flickering.

I have the N-75573-g1d0487f 64-bit static build from 29/09/2015, taken from this site: http://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/

From the numbers, it seems mine is newer.

Did you compile it yourself?

I compiled N-76452-ga97f1e7 and added N-76045-g97be5d4 from here - https://launchpad.net/~mc3man/+archive/ubuntu/trusty-media

Try the latest version from the original source: https://www.ffmpeg.org/download.html

Should I go for 2.8.1 (downloadable tar) or pull from git? Oh, I just compiled 2.8.1 and it says No such filter: 'perspective'

@DhavanVaidya Always use git, not release.

@LordNeckbeard Okay. I'll do that and post what happens.


text:
Looking for real time video streaming/editing software for commercial snips
As the title says i am looking for a video editing/playing software for commercial snips, etc.
I should be able to:

Add video files to a "queue"
Play this "queue" in a loop
Reorder video files while the "queue" is playing
If possible, display images for a chosen duration
If possible, be able to keep track of which video snips belong to a customer
If possible, be able to keep track of how much a video clip is played during a period of time (total time)

This will be used to sell and play commercial snips on big screens/projectors.
Can you recommend a suitable software that fulfills these requirements?
Best regards

Any decent software media player can do this. I'd recommend Potplayer.
It has a playlist module --> that's your 'queue'. It has a repeat playlist feature --> that's your loop. And you can add/remove/shuffle the entries in the playlist during playback. Potplayer can display still images but it defaults to a duration of 10 seconds. Not aware if that can be changed. You can duplicate the image entry in the playlist to have a play duration in multiples of 10 seconds. And you can get a custom duration by using ffmpeg to create a video of the still image like this:
ffmpeg -loop 1 -i imagefile -t 01:45 imagevideo.mp4

(1 minute, 45 seconds in the above example).
Use the 32-bit static build of ffmpeg from here.
The other logging/auditing features are probably not possible with regular media players out of the box. Digital signage softwares probably have them.


text:
Premier Pro CS5 makes AVCHD footage jagged and bad
I'm shooting on an FS700RH, the quality is fantastic when I preview it after putting it on my computer, but when I import it into Premiere, the quality just drops every time. I've tried multiple solutions, importing it different ways other than the Media Browser, changing the project settings and so on but I have no luck. The results are always the same. Horrible Jagged edges.
Footage before importing to Premiere:

Footage after importing to Premiere:

This is also how it looks after exporting as well so it's not just a problem with the Source Monitor. Like importing I've tried many different export settings, all with the same result. I have no idea what to do in order to preserve the quality.
I've spent the past 3 hours trying to find a solution online but have had no luck.

Are you interpreting it as interlaced or progressive? 2) Can you attached Mediainfo output for the file?

I've literally just fixed it! I right clicked it went to Modify -> Interperite -> Changes Upper Field to Progressive Scan in the Field Order. Never knew that option was there! Thanks fella if that was your thought in the first place haha!

Yes, that's what it looked like.

Thank you, I've posted the answer incase anyone else comes by this problem. From those hours no one suggested that at all. Thank you again!

Incase anyone comes across the same problem, here's the solution I used.
Once you've imported the footage, right click on the clip, go to 'Modify' then 'Interpret Footage':

A window should pop up. Down the bottom, under 'Field Order' change the setting from 'Upper Field First' to 'Conform to: No Fields (Progressive Scan)'.

Your footage should then adjust to it's original quality.
Upper Field First:

No Fields (Progressive Scan):


text:
Wrong YouTube thumbnail seen by Facebook Advertisement team
I have a really weird issue.
When I publish my YouTube video (1 hour long if that matters) I usually set a Custom thumbnail, which has a fixed amount of text on it, so it corresponds with the advertising guidelines of Facebook.
I have ~16% text on the image. According to the Facebook GRID tool.
All my ads are rejected by Facebook, and the answers I got were, that I have too much text on the thumbnail.
After messaging back-and-forth with the support team, they finally sent me a screenshot of the grid tool, and on their screenshot there's a totally different thumbnail that I'm using.
How can I prevent this from happening?
I used facebook debug tool, to fetch new scrape information for the video.


text:
DVD authoring burning
I am looking for a player that i can burn to a disk.
I used to have this facility when i used DVDit le but lost the serial number. I was able to write video files to disk along with a player - thus end user was guaranteed to be able to play disk.
Can anyone help ?
Thanks.
Feargal

There are a number of free, open-source, video players, but VLC springs to mind as one of the best for being cross-platform. You could freely include versions for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOs, Android, as well as OSes you've never heard of like QNX Sylable, OS2, Solaris and three flavours of BSD.


text:
Achieving real time preview in Sony Vegas Pro 11?
I am sort of blown away how I cannot even manage to achieve realtime preview in a tiny preview window size, at draft on auto.
The source footage is only 1080p. I have already tried Google search tips and tricks.
I have also tried enabling GPU acceleration of video processing, and reducing size of RAM reserved for Dynamic RAM Preview.
I have a fairly decent system, with a quad-core i5, 12GB Ram, and a GTX 560 Ti (1GB VRAM, 384 cores).
Yet, I still cannot get lag-free preview on DRAFT - QUARTER with a preview box of approx. 1-inch tall.
Premiere Pro CS6 doesn't seem to have any issues with the footage playback.

Nvidia driver version? OS?

I have the latest NVIDIA driver, 358.91. I am running Win7 Ultimate x64 SP1.


text:
Recording me write my notes and my speech at my desk
I am looking for a fairly cheap set-up (budget: ~C$200) to do the following:

videotape the set of notes that I am writing;
record my speech as I explain what I am writing.

An example of what I am trying to achieve is here. Any kind of pointer would help as I have no idea about how I should go about this.

First, you need a smartphone, such as iPhone or Android.  Then you need something to hold it over your notes, such as this.  Then you need diffuse lighting at or above the level of your smartphone, one illuminating the left side of your notes, the other the right side of your notes.  If your lighting is very diffuse, then shadows should not be a problem as you write from one side of the page to another.  These work lights might do the trick.  You'll have to figure out how you want to suspend them, however.
Finally, you need video editing software that lets you trim your video so your beginnings and endings are crisp and where you want them to be.  You can download a free version of DaVinci Resolve that works on Mac and Windows platforms and can output FullHD (but not UHD) video.  You can use the microphone built into your phone.


text:
How can I insert a space between several clips in Premiere?
In Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2015 I want to select 20 or more clips to drop on the timeline at once (in this case they are audio clips).  However I would like to have a configurable space or gap between each clip on the timeline (say a 5 second space between each clip) rather than having them be one right after the other.  How can I do this?

The best way I've found is based off of "User" above but much simpler, no need to copy and paste:

Drag and drop all 20+ clips on to the timeline to add them.
Press 'a' and hold Shift, then click on the leftmost clip on the sequence to select all video clips to the right of the first clip on a single track.
Right click and choose Speed/Duration. Choose a setting like 95% (relatively small gap, enough to be able to set Default Transitions on multiple clips all at once using a single sequence) and check Ripple Edit, Shifting Trailing Clips. This is the important part.
Right click the selected clips again and choose Speed/Duration. Set the Speed back to 100% and uncheck Ripple Edit, Shifting Trailing Clips.

I believe I figured out a workaround to do this (based on the idea of using the speed duration from putting a gap between each clip)

Drag and drop all 20+ clips on to the timeline to add them.
Select on the clips and copy them onto a new audio track
Select all the new clips you just copied and right click and choose Speed/Duration.  Choose a setting like 50% and check Ripple Edit, Shifting Trailing Clips
Delete the clips on the new track you just copied and time stretched, leaving you with just the original clips.

The original clips should now be spaced out.  Obviously could be problematic if you have lots of other stuff on your timeline but you could lock those tracks.

You could generate 5 seconds of silence and do an insert edit between each one. It's pretty easy with the keyboard shortcuts - in the timeline window ↓,, ↓,, ↓, and so on

Sound promising can you flesh this out a little more? As it is now I don't know how to do it:  1. How to generate 5 seconds of silence? And how to insert edit? When I press the comma key nothing happens.  I'm on Windows if that makes any difference

You could generate 5 seconds of silence with Audition, if you have it. Make a new waveform file and go to edit>insert>silence and save the file out. Otherwise you could do the same with Audacity (free), or you could probably download silence from the internet (make sure you get silence that's licensed under a creative commons license though ;). As for the insert edits, comma is the default key for insert edit on Windows and Mac, at least on US English keyboards. Check your keyboard shortcuts ( Ctrl-Alt-K ).

My comma key is set for Application->Clip->Insert. When you press the comma key, how does premiere know what you want to insert?  I'm thinking there must be a step before this

oh, sorry, yes you need the clip in your source window. Without in and out points set it should insert the whole clip, otherwise in the source window hit x to select the whole clip.

Ok it still wasn't working but after some searching I found I needed to select a track for source patching (see https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1420758).  I had selected tracks in the "track target column" but not in the "source indicator column" (as described here: https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/using/source-patching-track-targetting.html)

Also it looks like the cleaner way to do this is to have the source patcher in the black/silent state by Alt clicking in the "source indicator column" in the track headers and then doing the insert edit as you suggested.  This way instead of having silent audio you actually have a true empty gap between the clips.

I know the easiest way: first select all the clips you want to move to the right to create space, right click on them and tap 'group' now they are all considered as one clip. Now all you have to is drag it to the right and later if you want to select only one file just right click on the whole group and then press 'ungroup'. That's it, you're done.


text:
Realtime fulldome video splitting
I need to split fulldome video stream to several projectors for planetarium. I wrote hlsl (and glsl) shader which does exactly what I need and has some configurable parameters. It works in MPC:HC that comes with K-Lite codec pack. But MPC doesn't have API for plugins as I know so I can't make an interface for configuring the shader or splitting the video for several video outputs. So I'm looking for software that can help me with this.
I need two things:
1) Apply configurable effect to video (cut and unwrap a sector for chosen projector)
2) Show results in separate windows or transmit directly to projectors.


text:
ffv1 realtime capture throws out a lot of frame dropped messages!
Can you help me to figure out what's going on here?
I'm trying to capture in realtime my screen and save it losslessy via ffv1 codec.

CPU usage while recording is not so much, as comparison h264 in ultrafast profile takes lot more cpu than ffv1.
Here's the command I'm using:
ffmpeg -f dshow -y -i video="screen-capture-recorder" -framerate 30 -c:v ffv1 -pix_fmt bgra -t 5 capture.mkv

I tried also adding the tuning and rtbufsize but nothing changes :\
ffmpeg -f dshow -y -i video="screen-capture-recorder" -framerate 30 -c:v ffv1 -pix_fmt bgra -t 5 -tune zerolatency -rtbufsize 2100M capture.mkv

Any suggestions? :)

I get the same result with your commands, however if I skip the pixel format conversion and use the input pixel format 'bgr0', then except for an initial frame drop, I get no further drops. Note that tune is a x264 parameter - it has no relevance for FFV1.
And if I use gdigrab (my preferred grabbing device), I get no frame drops at all, even with bgra:-
ffmpeg -y -f gdigrab -i desktop -framerate 30 -c:v ffv1 -pix_fmt bgra -t 5 capture.mkv

Oh, i have a weird problem. You know in order to have the libfdk_aac i compilated the ffmpeg build with the linux cross compile script https://github.com/rdp/ffmpeg-windows-build-helpers/blob/master/cross_compile_ffmpeg.sh but i guess gdigrab is missing. Also a dumb question that i would still like to ask, for screen recording the input will be always rgb24 or equivalents right? Make any sense using a 32bit (rgba) ?

Yeah, no sense recording an alpha plane for screen capture. Just grab a static ffmpeg build from Zeranoe; rename that EXE and use it for capture.

You right about this, but I would like an omnicomprehensive ffmpeg executable. Tomorrow i will see if i can build a more complete version :) So about the alpha, asking it to record a 32 bit ver of a screen capture, the alpha will just be filled with zero?

Oh and i tried the gdigrab, differently from the screen-capture-recorder that handles only the main monitor, gdigrab grabs ALL the monitors together, there's a more simple way for selecting the monitor like 1, 2, 3? Or the only possible way is to deal with the offsets? (this require specifying manually the resolution, thing that could change time by time if you want to use that batch somewhere else)

The alpha plane will be useless. Not sure if it is zeroed or random data. Check in a compositing app. Can't find any qualifier right now to select only one monitor for capture. Since ffmpeg can capture a single window when given title, I think it may be possible if there is an equivalent ID assigned internally to a single monitor's output. Will need some research.

Thanks man ;) maybe I could try to send a mail to the developers and ask.

You can post a bug report at https://ffmpeg.org/bugreports.html. Make sure to submit the syntax and console output, and ask specific questions :)


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Timelapse - Exaggerated blinking
I have a Timelapse question. We recorded about 22 minutes of a woman and boy lying on the ground around sunset to show the passing of time from day to night. We would like the shot in the film to be closer to 10-30 seconds.
I think the editor may have just changed the speed settings. Anyway, the problem is that the woman's blinking and the child's breathing both look very exaggerated now.
Is there any way to fix this in After Effects or Premiere?
Thanks in advance!

Import the footage into After Effects. Bring it into a comp and change the speed of the layer either with the speed control for the layer or with time remapping. Make sure the layer has Frame Blending turned on, and that it's on for your final render. Frame blending will blend all of the frames that make up a single frame, so if 20 minutes makes 10 seconds that's… er… 120 frames of original footage to make one frame of timelapse. This should mean that any quick motion in the original footage will blur away, and it should get rid of your blinks and breathing. If that's not enough you might want to try either the Time Warp at 100% speed with a long shutter time or even wide time effects to ad extra 'temporal blurring' to the footage.
Note that you'll have to render out the clips rather than using Dynamic Linking, because Premiere won't do the frame blends like AE does. Expect very slow renders.

Another possibility, depending on the shot / lighting:
Make two comps- one is your time lapse, and one is your two subjects playing in real time, not time lapsed.
Mask (and feather) around the subjects, so the surrounding is moving quickly, but they are breathing and blinking in normal time.
Slightly crazier idea:
Track the parts of your subjects that look weird, then replace only those parts with realtime playback masks- ie the eyes and the chest?

I can think of three ways. First one is for if you're feeling lucky; the second one will require manual sifting, and the third is a different approach.
Method 1
Increasing speed in editor usually means undersampling the footage i.e. showing every nth frame. So, try trimming the in-point of the original unspeeded footage by a few frames, say, half a second's worth and then apply the speed change. That should offset the undersampling selection by those many frames. You may get lucky and retain fewer 'blinking' frames in the final result.
Method 2
Increase the speed of the original footage to create a result of around 2 minutes. Let's say your final output is supposed to be 20 seconds. You now have to trim 5 out of 6 frames. So, scan the result, split the footage every 6 frames and keep 1 in each segment, deleting the rest. This will be time-consuming, but should work as last resort.
Method 3
This might not create a smooth timelapse but could be acceptable. Select 20 one-second segments at around equal intervals from the original unspeeded footage. Join them together and extend the clips at the joins by 4 or 5 frames (on both sides) to create a 8-10 frame dissolve. Since the segments are curated, you can avoid all blinking. The chief issue here would be subjects' motion across segments. You'll have smooth motion within a segment but could have a 'jerky' change during a dissolve. So potential for a weird visual rhythm.


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Does Vegas allow for rendering in frame rate different than source frame rate?
I filmed my short video in 60p, yes not 60i. I set the project in Vegas Pro 11 to 30 frame per second, but the only thing that seemed to get rid of scan line was to change the project to 30 frames per second interlaced (lower field first).
However, Now Vegas will not allow me to render to match the project settings. It simply returns an error that prevented it from starting the render. Is Vegas capable of rendering in a format differing from the source media?
Software: Vegas pro 11.0 (up to date)
Hardware/OS: Windows 7 and NVIDIA GTX 560 Ti (both up to date).
Thank you

Yes, it does allow rendering in a format different from source media. Vegas works well with projects containing mixed media formats.
More likely, this may be an interpretation problem. In the Project Media window, right-click on the input video and select Properties (at the bottom). Check that the field order is set to Progressive (since your footage is 60p). Same for your project, and render settings.

Oddly enough, even though the source footage is 60p, and if I render it as 30 (progressive) I wind up with scanlines. I don't know how to avoid these. I have already disabled smart resampling for the project which has eliminated ghosting.

Can you post the Mediainfo (mediaarea.net) readout for the video?


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Generate travelleng matte from a nearly-white bright background?
I have video of a stage with a bright screen behind it, and I thought it would be neat if I could (easily-enough) punch in another image on the screen.  And not just a small section of it, but fill it out with a "projected" image that I'll animate using keyframe movement and zooming.

If I use the Luma Matte in Premiere, especially doing it before the Color Correction effect, it can find the bright screen pretty well.  However, unlike the Chroma Key effect, the Luma Key effect doesn't seem to have anything for shifting the edge or feathering, so it leaves a white line around the figures (and it doesn't handle everything well, really).
The un-corrected footage is a bit dark with the screen being very bright; I not only raised the shadows but I knocked back the brightest whites on a curve adjustment.  So using the un-corrected version it should be easy to make a matte from that, but the Luma Matte effect they included is just too lame and does not produce a clean image even though it can identify the screen.

Now I thought about using AE for this, but I don't know how to use it and it's not simple.  The rotobrush has trouble with the white medallion at the head of the pipa and the gap that shows through the recurved neck of the instrument, and causes far more complications in the Premiere project in general.
So I'm wondering if there is a (free) add-on effect that does a better job of this and/or has more command over it, or a stand-alone tool to generate a traveling matte file, or some techniques and tips to make what comes with Premiere work out better.

The problem that you're going to have with this is that the colour of the screen is too similar to colours in the foreground. If you look at the levels on the highlighted part of the drummer's face they're very similar to the levels on the edges of the screen, and a similar colour, same for the drum skins and the pattern on his shirt. I had a go in AE with no success using keylight, colour range key and even extract, but nothing works. So a clean matte is going to involve lots of work rotoscoping.
One thing you might get away with, depending on your background content is to put it below the original layer, and set the original layer's transfer mode to darken. If your background layer is darker than the foreground it will show through, so as long as it's darker than the screen but lighter than the performers it will composite ok. You might help things along with some masks on the performer's faces and the other light areas, and you may get a bit of blending, but it might be good enough, without spending years roto-ing.

+1 If you have to rotoscope, try Mocha.