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Join / Concatenate .wmv files
I have 2 .wmv files which are equal in codec information (windows media video 9 in 640x360 with 25 fps; windows media audio 2 in stereo with 44,1kHz and 16 bits per sample). I'd like to concatenate / join them, so that I get one file which plays the content of file 1 and then the contents of file 2.
I can only use free, preferably open, software, preferably available for Linux.

Asfbin appears like it might be able to do what you are looking for.

Appears to be a Windows program?

@JoshP - look further down the page, there is a linux command line version.

You are correct sir :)


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Software or video interpretation to create live dance floor effects
I'm trying to create a video feed that will display a special effects rendition of a dance area on a nearby video board.  Much like what many of you have probably seen in a children's museum.  An example of what I'm trying to do can be seen here: http://exs.exploratorium.edu/exhibits/recollections/
I've been searching for hours, but as there isn't a specific search term I can think of, it's extremely frustrating.  I would really appreciate it if someone can point me in the right direction or has another solution to how this can be done.

Here is another example from Ripley's believe it or not exhibit in case anyone is having problems following my thought process here: http://www.ripleys.com/surfersparadise/files/2009/12/home-slides_s14.jpg

I think most things like this tend to be specialty installations where the system and image processing is designed by the artist making it.  The exact ways to approach it would depend on the particular type of effect you are trying to produce.  It could be as simple as storing the last few frames and blending them together with an average that is weighted towards the last frame to give it a blur look or various other possible methods of effect.
At it's simplest, you might look at some of the simple effects stuff that some webcams make available, but I'd expect you'd need to do custom work for most of it.  You could also look in to video jokey software that might have some components that could be used for this kind of thing, though I don't personally have a whole lot of experience in that particular arena, so the amount of help I can give is limited there.

Thanks for taking the time to respond. That's what I'm starting to gather, that it's all custom.
But I'm still a little surprised that there isn't some simple software out there that can do this.  Basically all I'm searching for is some software that can recognize a persons outline (or any shape really) and then perform a special effect on that moving shape.  20 years ago it's hard to believe anyone could do this, but now with facial recognition software all over the place I'm amazed there isn't a commercial version of something like this.

@Keith - there are image processing libraries now that would make it far easier to implement, but it's still a special case that has no significant market.  Just because it's possible for us to do something doesn't mean that it is a good investment of time and resources to make a user friendly way of doing something.

I'm not much of a audio/video guy, but I'd appreciate any advice if you think this could be put together by a "weekend warrior". And I guess it's all dependent on what the actual time investment would be required for a professional product, but I actually think if this was a couple hundred dollar software package you would have a pretty big market in the nightlife industry.

VJ software would be the place to start, hopefully someone else can comment more on it though.  Otherwise it is going to be programming oriented if VJ software can't handle your needs.  Unfortunately, I've never personally worked with VJ software for more than about an hour per product that I've even seen, and that was years ago, so my knowledge in that space is practically zilch.

source: Stack Exchange

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

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Have to reduce the video size with losing the quality
I have a mov file with the size of 74 MB. because of the size it is getting slow to load in my webpages. i would like to reduce my video size. But if i do that by using online compressor the video quality become low. i am not bother about reducing the resolution and changing the video format. Can anyone please help for doing this more efficiently

Could you not upload it to an on-line video service like Vimeo or Youtube? A full HD video on Vimeo easily takes up the space you mention and still people are able to watch it. If that's not an option then here's a link to a near duplicate question: http://avp.stackexchange.com/questions/2615/compress-or-convert-mov-to-lighter-format

By nature, reducing the size of the video (either by bitrate, by resolution or both) will reduce the quality of the video.  You can minimize the loss by using good compression algorithms from high quality sources with proper settings, but there will always be quality loss with additional compression, even if minimal.
Without knowing more about the type, length and resolution of your video, it isn't possible to give the best advice, but using 2 pass VBR H.264 video is a fairly standard compression algorithm to use.  2 pass VBR will adjust the rate of data use to help account for differences in complexity of the video and make better use of the data you allocate to it, but it is still necessary to allocate sufficient data rate or the quality will deteriorate.
If the video is HD, then it would have to be pretty short (under one minute) to stay under 74mb without pretty significant quality loss.  Dropping the resolution will similarly greatly reduce the quality, though depending on the level of compression, it may be less blocky.

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Cannot render 16:9 video for youtube
I downloaded this YT video, and want to make it 16:9 in Vegas 10 pro.
Here is my file settings:
Template - HD 1080 24p (1920x1080, 29.970 fps)
Frame rate - 29.970(NTSC)
Field order - None (progressive scan)
Render settings:
Save as type - Sony AVC (.mp4,.m2ts,*.avc)
Template - Internet1280x720-30p
Bit rate - 8,000,000
Right click on video track - properties - Maintain aspect ratio is not checked.
Playing in Vegas is fine, but rendered video is full of interruptions, freeze places...
Audio sounds ok.
Rendering still images with the above settings is ok.
Any help, pls.

Is the problem that the video does not render at 16:9, or is it that the rendered video stutters and freezes?

@Tortilla, the starting video is not 16:9, and my resulting video is 16:9, but video stutters and freezes. I didn't make any other changes in Vegas except changing aspect ratio. Thanks for your time.

Have you tried to disable graphic card rendering? Incompatible graphic cards or drivers may cause the exact symptoms you describe. Preview may not use graphic card rendering, as this is controlled by another setting.

Select Options|Preferences
Go to tab card "Video"
Set "GPU acceleration of video processing" to "Off"
When rendering: Open your render template and select Encode Mode:
Render using CPU only.

No need to apologize for not being able to comment.  This is fine as a possible solution for the problem and provides the detail for how to attempt to fix it, so it really is an answer.

The source video from YouTube is Standard Definition not HD, so your project properties in Vegas are not set right nor can they be set to 1080p. Simply, you can't take an SD video and make it into an HD video.
The proper way to set Vegas project properties is to use the folder icon far right top of the properties pop up window, this will allow you to "match media settings" so that your Vegas project has correctly identified your source material.
Here is a short YouTube Tutorial on this:

No matter, you still won't be able to take SD video and make it HD, but at least your project will start out on the right foot.


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Is HDMI 1.4 backwards compatible with 1.3?
I'm installing a Hitachi MS-1 switcher, and it's HDMI output works fine with an HDMI v1.3 cable, but not with a cable v1.4.  I've tested the v1.4 cable on a different output device (DVD player) and it works fine.  I've also tried two different display devices (monitor and projector).
My question is:  Is HDMI v1.4 supposed to be fully backwards compatible, or are there some caveats?
Also, has anyone else encountered any equipment that worked with HDMI v1.3 but not v1.4?

A 1.4 cable should work fine with a 1.3 signal, however an HDMI 1.4 signal will not work with an HDMI 1.3 cable or an HDMI 1.3 output unless the source is capable of using a prior standard.


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Adobe Premier CS6 'Unable to open file' coming from Cineform
I just transformed a MP4 file coming from my GoPro into a MOV file using CineForm studio. It works great in MAC.
However, when doing the same on Windows, and transforming from MP4 to AVI, when trying to open the file on Premiere, I get an error saying 'unkown file or damaged file'.  I am guessing Adobe Premiere doesn't know how to open that AVI file, but at the same time it's weird because I can open it with Windows Media Player.
Anybody has experienced this or knows how to solve it?
Thanks

Simply update your Cineform installation and maybe also Premiere, this was a bug with Cineform and got fixed about 2 years ago.

Sounds like a codec problem.  Is there a reason you don't just directly try opening the MP4 or MOV file?  Do those also have problems?  You shouldn't have to work with a AVI file in Premiere on Windows.  You need to identify the codec being used in the video and then install the proper codecs.  There are different types of codecs that can be used on Windows and it is possible that the codec that works in Windows Media Player wouldn't work in Premiere.  You need to obtain a copy of the codec that will work with Premiere.
If you do not know how to identify the codec, if you can post a small sample of video encoded the same way, it should be possible for us to identify the codec and it might help identify the problem as well if it is something more rare that isn't codec related.


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Resulting video is bad always on the same place
I'm using Sony Vegas pro 10 and trying to render a small video for YouTube (3 min).
Resulting video is always slightly flushed, frozen, interrupted... on the same place - on about 1:18 till 1:36.
Original video is ok. I tried to render just this small problematic part - the same result. Something is wrong on that part. Playing in Vegas - no problem.
What could be the reason, pls.
Maybe important, on that place the audio track is the most loud.
Rendering another videos is ok.

I hesitate to answer this without seeing the problem or looking at your Vegas timeline to see how it has been set up, properties etc, and I would also need to know the computer. Vegas Pro can have some serious problems if the computer does not have the horse power, its severely limited by available resources.

Two possibilities that come to mind are that it could be a dropped frame that isn't that noticeable until an H.264 compression is applied or it could be that you are using an insufficient bit rate and that particular part of the video has enough going on that it couldn't compress well.
I would check the time code around the problem to make sure all the frames are there.  I would also try increasing the bit rate used and try VBR 2 pass and see if either of those fix it.


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How do I animate an image based on relative position in after effects?
When I add text to an after effects project there's an "animate" triangle I can click which lets me animate the position of the text from 0.0, 0.0. This is great because if I duplicate that layer and move it around the text animates relatively from its new position no problem.
I'd like to do this with an image but I can't work out how to do it. Animating the position of the image based on key frames is fine but when I try to duplicate and move the animated image around it animates from it's original position.
Is there any easy way to do this?

You can move the anchor point of a layer, but this may upset scale, rotation or masking. There is a much simpler and very intuitive way to do it.
Click on the position property to select all keyframes. Park the playhead on one of these keyframes (use j or k keys to do this). Now if you move one of the keyframes they all move. If you don't park the playhead on an existing keyframe then you will just create a new keyframe at the current time and leave the others unchanged.

Tip: If you need to have the playhead at a particular time to see the
  relative position and there is no keyframe there, just create a
  temporary one at the current time.

And furthermore there is parenting. You parent your image to a null. Copy the null and image over, and set the null in a new position. The image will move relative to the null's position

I've found that using the Anchor Point is a great way to do this. The position will not copy over (be sure to just copy the anchor point animation), and it will instead animate relative to the position.
I usually do it the reverse of this. I set my position using the Anchor Point, and then animate using keyframes on the Position.
I generally don't use the "Animate" button on text in AE, though, so this might not work as you're expecting.

There are several ways.  You can use an adjustment layer to apply to the layers above it or you can nest a composition such that the movements of that composition apply to everything in the source.  I most often use the nested composition approach as it lets me work on things separately, but it is a bit more of a pain for making changes while looking at the final output, so it isn't ideal for every situation.


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component to vga cable not giving video
I bought these composite to vga cables to go from the YPbPr ports on these dvd players to a "standard" lcd monitor's vga port.
Unfortunately, they don't work. The best results I can get are green and blue colors to come through on any given monitor.  Other monitors don't show any output at all.
This sort of thing should work, right?   Any help/advice is really appreciated.

Did you read this part? "This cable DOES NOT CONVERT VGA signals to component video or vice versa - it functions only with devices that use the VGA connector for component video. "

nope, missed that part.  crap.

Not sure why this question was downvoted. Absolutely legitimate.

VGA is RGBHV (horizontal and vertical sync) not YPbPr so without active adapting hardware, it isn't going to work.  The formats are not compatible as the addressing information is missing.    You might be able to find a dual mode monitor that has support for both formats on the connector (some video mixers do for example), but it would be luck of the draw and pretty rare.

authors: ปาริฉัตร เสงี่ยมจิตร์


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Typical size of one hour long mp4 video
What is the typical size of a mp4 video, size 1280x720 encoded by ffmpeg libx264, and lasts for one hour? Currently my file is around 700Mb, is it too much?

Is it too much for what?

Impossible to answer with the limited information provided. Which rate control method (-crf, -b:v, -qp) did you use with what value? Typically with ffmpeg questions you always include your command and the complete console output. You should know this already from your questions on other help resources.

There is no "typical" size.  It depends entirely on the quality level and level of motion in the video.  I could encode ten hours of video where there is no movement with very little space since the compression would work very well.
On the other hand, if I had a video where every frame was completely different from the last, it would take a huge amount of space to compress it with any kind of quality being left over.
Using Youtube as an example, uses a data rate of 2megabits per second for 720p video.  An hour of video has 3600 seconds, so that's 7200 megabits, which is 900 megabytes of video.  Bluray disks on the other hand often use much higher rates, such as 10 or even 25mbps which would take 4.5 gigabytes and 11.25 gigabytes respectively.
As you can see, there isn't a "standard" size and it can vary by orders of magnitude.  The best bet is to compress it to whatever level you need and see if the quality is sufficient for your purposes, though 700 megabytes for an hour of HD video is already pretty small.  Compressing further from such a highly compressed source is likely to obtain sub-standard results at any quality level.

The H.264 standard defines maximum bit rates for 1280x720@30fps as between 14.000 and 42.000 kbit/s, depending on the profile (baseline, main, high etc.). It's even higher for higher frame rates. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC)
Sony Vegas standard rendering templates use bitrates between 2 and 16 Mbps.
Youtube recommends bitrates between 5.000 and 30.000 kbps (https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171).
Assuming your video is 700MB (MByte) in size, not 700Mb (MBit),  its video bitrate is less than 1.5 Mbps.
So the answer to your question is a definitive No.
Your video is not too big.
It's rather too small. With that low bitrate of yours you might get a better quality by rendering it to a lower resolution.


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Where does the 'extra' data come from when transcoding video?
This is something I've never quite understood, but have always wondered. Forgive my basic knowledge here, but I've tried to research this without a specific answer as to what is going on.
When I convert from an .MTS file to ProRes422 HQ, the file get's huge. Why is that? Where is that extra data coming from if it's not there to begin with? i.e. higher bitrate. I understand the codec has a standard bitrate it will always maintain, but why do it if the original file bitrate is so much lower?
For example, a stock GH2 mts for me streams at about 22 Mbits/s, I convert it to ProRes422 HQ, that same file is now playing at 216 Mbits/s. - With no discernible image quality difference.
What is going on in the codec that makes the file so huge? Other than workflow issues, why would you want to transcode from MTS? Does converting it to ProRes (or another codec) 'Unpack' the data in a more efficient way?
Why not use something like ProRes422 LT if you're starting from a much lower data rate like a native MTS file provides?

When video or audio data is compressed, it works by two different mechanisms.  The first (which is the only one used by lossless compression) is to look for patterns that are repeated.  When patterns are found, it can store the data once and reference the stored copy.
The second is only used lossy compression and involves discarding the least significant parts of the information.  This can be done in several creative ways such as being more forgiving in what pattern can be matched, but the loss of information generally ends up equating to a slight loss of detail.
You can think of it kind of like blurring a photo.  You still have just as many pixels and just as much "raw" data, but the amount of detail stored in that data is reduced, and thus it can be compressed further because it fits patterns better.  When you move from the high compression, lossy format to a lossless format, a large number of those savings are no longer applied, so it stores the raw "but fudged" data again under a new system that isn't capable of as much compression.
Basically the video is uncompressed from your original format to form a file of 1920 by 1080 pixels (assuming it's a 1080p file anyway) and then it is recompressed differently to become a ProRes file.  The file size is large because the ways that it will try to simplify the file are simpler, but the information that is recorded is still the blurred copy that resulted from decompressing the smaller file.
This is also why it is important to work with the highest possible quality files until final output because repeated recompression of files will result in additional quality loss every time.

Some filetypes are compressed, so when you transcode, your software will first decompress, so the interim file is going to be much larger. If you then convert to a filetype which isn't compressed, then you stay at this large size.
It won't have any better quality, as you can never improve quality by transcoding, and in fact it is likely to worse - possibly not by much, but sometimes transcoding really alters the quality.
A key difference, and the reason why uncompressed filetypes are used is that they can be played back on devices with low compute power. If you have used strong compression, the device has to do a lot of work to decompress fast enough to play it back - so you may get lag, stuttering, glitches etc.


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How to change lightworks project frame rate?
I created a project with 60fps.
Imported videos which are at 25fps (using eyeframe converter).
Did all my editing, took me forever and exported the project.
Again used eyeframe converter to get .mp4.
Here was the problem, the video was playing at higher rate (meaning it was playing at double or more faster speed),
but the audio was playing at normal rate.
Now I am wondering is it possible to change the project fps or
copy the edit into a new project which is at 25fps?
Please help me.

So, you accidentally created it at 60fps?

Yes, I din't notice the fps settings. Now I am unable to change the settings.

In the current version of Lightworks (11.5.1) you can change the Output framerate (and other formats) from the Project menu in the top right corner:

Click on the menu arrow by "Project Name"
Select "Video"
Click on the menu arrow for "Output format" and choose a different target FPS.

I haven't used LightWorks recently or extensively, and I am not sure how the whole EyeFrame converter works, but if you want to change your output frame-rate, I think this link will help.
In it (the link), user HammerHead says:

You choose the project-rate when you first create your project from the projects browser (the window that you see when you first run up the app). This governs the frame-rate that all your edits are created at in that project.
Once you enter that project/room you can then change the output rate in that project using the setting you describe on the project-card. So if you're in a 25fps project, the available playback rates will be 25 & 50.
To make a 30fps project, go back to the projects-browser (by clicking the arrow icon in the lower right corner), and fill in the details at the top.

I'm pretty sure that the sentence I took the liberty of making bold, is the answer. Also, the user was asking for a 30fps video but it should work for 25fps. Read the whole link for more details.
I don't think this is what you are looking for, but here is another link, just in case.

Thanks for the answer, finally I can continue with  my project from I left off :)

Glad to help @KirkHammett! If this answered your question, then make sure to accept this answer. http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5234/how-does-accepting-an-answer-work

I couldn't change my fps setting like how it is described.

Yes, sorry. I haven't used LightWorks in along time, but just installed it and found that I couldn't do it either. If you aren't very far in a project, I would just recommend that you restart... Not that that would be optimal for large projects. There should be some way to do what you need. I'll try to look into it some more.


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How can I accomplish smooth video playback with QLab 2?
My setup is the following:

BlackMagic Television Studio
MacBook Pro for controlling the BlackMagic TVS
A video camera connected via SDI (stands in front of a blue screen)
MacBook Pro with QLab 2.0 for back- / foreground connected to the TVS

QLab's rendering:

1x Video background @ 720p (QuickTime - JPEG codec)
3x Video footage    @ 720p with alpha (QuickTime - HAP codec)

These four video layers needs to play at one time all together. But unfortunately the images stutters already when playing the video background alone. Image what happens when playing these four layers together. ;)
The MacBook is pretty new and filled with 16 GB of RAM, so I can't imagine thats is the biggest bottleneck.
Is there a possibility to load the video's in the RAM before playing it? Or are there other things I can do to make the playback smooth? Maybe other cue-able programs?
Thanks in advantage!
PS - No audio is needed.

Sounds like a job for either re-compression, solid state drives or both.  It appears that the BlackMagic Television Studio does has the media server that the other Black Magic ATEMs have, so you might also be able to load them in to that depending on their length.
Your bottle neck is almost certainly data rates, and the main options are to increase the rate your system can move data at (solid state drives), reduce the amount of data that needs to be moved (re-compression) or place the data somewhere that it can be accessed more easily (in the media server of the ATEM).


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Convert vfr mov file to cfr mov file
Adobe Premiere has problems with variable frame rate. If I import a MOV file from an iPhone for example than audio and video is not synchron. I found out that the problem is the variable frame rate. Now I'm looking for a solution to fix this.
Currently I reencoded the videos in Windows Movie Maker for example but I don't want to have a loss in quality. I searched a bit and found out that AviSynth could do this for me. AviSynth cannot open MOV files so qtsource should be able to handle it. I placed it in the plugin folder of AviSynth but in the readme it says that the vfr feature is experimental and not working ...
Yes, I could use Handbrake but I always would have to reencode. Are there other options?

If you have Premiere, why not simply use Adobe Media Encoder?  I believe it should handle your needs.  There will always be some quality loss though as you will have to change codecs and the compression is going to differ.  You can use high quality formats to minimize the loss, but there is going to be loss.


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Does animation make use of any Artificial Intelligence?
I have always wondered if the animation technology used in film-making uses AI to any extent.

Yes, quite frequently, particularly in crowd simulation.  Actors within the crowd are programmed with particular behavior types and will interact with each other to form a more lifelike crowd.  The interactions are usually fairly simple, but it is a form of AI.  I'm not sure if it is still around, but one of the early programs used for this was actually called "Behavior".
Some procedural animation could also be described as a form of AI as well.  For example, when a character needs to walk across uneven terrain, it can be possible to setup a physics simulation and have the character alter their movements to maintain balance.  This is really also a form of AI combined with physics simulation.
There are probably others as well, but those are the first two that come to mind as relatively common uses.

Crowd simulation is indeed a big one. For Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson, knowing he'd never be able to afford live actors for large crowd scenes, commissioned a crowd simulation application now called Massive, and that application has been used in many movies since (and not just PJ's). There are other ones as well; Pixar created one to plug into Renderman, and it was used for Finding Nemo to simulate the schools of fish in various scenes. That one used a form of neuroevolution to achieve variances in motion between fish.

I don't think it's very common. They use animators, which may have set movements, which they can queue at certain times. Self-interactive AI seems like it would take too much time to program and reprogram.

This is simply inaccurate.  For primary character animation, you are correct.  Animators can do a better job of making fluid natural movement, or even more often, motion capture is used for actual actors giving performances, however for digital extras (particularly crowds), behavior is almost always AI driven since it would be prohibitively expensive and unnecessary to do it by hand.  IK (Inverse Kinematics) and physics simulation allow for reasonably clean and natural movement to be computer generated since a lot of movement is governed by physics, it just isn't very expressive.

More informations can be found here.  It also isn't new, Softimage|Behavior was introduced in 2002 and was a rebranding of Motivate made by The Motion Factory.  That might not be the first such software either, it's just the first I personally used.


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Subtitle SubRip (*.srt) Positioning
I like SubRib (*.srt) subtitle positioning, as shown below:
28
00:02:25,016 --> 00:02:27,393
{\pos(200,250)}- <i>Naw</i>, you're fired.
- What?
But that makes me wonder is whether this position will remain the same for the movie file in a different screen resolution?
For example, the dimensions movies is 1920x800 in the 1440x900 monitor, and then played in a 1024x600 monitor.
This method is relative to the dimensions of the movie file or to monitor? Are all the players recognize the positioning in this way? Is there another way to do the positioning?

it's gotta be relative to the movie, right? But then...which version of the movie, or maybe it has to list the movie size at the beginning of the .srt file?

For example, 1080p version with dimension 1920x800 and 720p with dimension 1280x720 from same movie. Both played in the 1440x900 monitor and 1024x600 monitor.

A player doesn't have to acknowledge the position of subtitles. So a user could re-position them if he wanted to.
Thats actually the standard way of doing it. What you have there is a custom tag. The .srt format doesn't include any position data for the subtitles. Some players can recognize this sort of custom data and use it but you can't expect that a player will understand it.


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Is it possible to use Canon G11 as Webcam?
I would like to use my Canon G11 as a webcam, and I thought this would be as simple as getting a video capture card to convert the composite video out of the camera into USB on the laptop. I have tried a number of capture cards now of which show up as a webcam. They allow me to capture video from the device fine, but that's not really what I want to do.

It is going to depend on what software you are using and what it expects for a webcam.  In theory, if the capture device supports Window Video Capture, it should allow for you to rig it up as a webcam in any software that will work with a Windows Video Capture device, but not all capture devices and not all software that uses a webcam support Windows Video Capture (or similar technologies on other platforms) to allow for the connection to occur.
Sometimes it is possible to use third party software to make the connection too, but that depends entirely on the capture card and client software being used.


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Flagging noteworthy moments during lengthy video recording?
I work in a developmental psychology lab where it would be useful to have audio / video documentation of notable behavior and speech patterns.  Sessions with subjects last for several hours, and during this time, most of my attention is devoted to the proper administration of tests.  It would be nice to have something as simple as a button press that inserts some type of marker / flag / bookmark / chapter division into the video footage whenever I observe noteworthy behavior I'll want to review later on.  During review, I envision being able to use the marker system to jump straight to these moments of interest.
The chief issue I'm trying to avoid here is wasting a bunch of time searching through hours of tape just to collect a few minutes (or even seconds) of worthwhile footage.
I realize that a low-tech workaround would be to just synchronize a stopwatch to the start of the tape, and just glance at this / jot down times whenever anything interesting happens.  However, this would still be a somewhat cumbersome undertaking, as I also use a stopwatch during the administration of several tests.
Is anybody familiar with any specific camcorders that could handle this sort of thing?  Perhaps a model that lets you insert "chapter breaks" while recording?  Any input is appreciated - I feel I may be missing some other obvious ideas here.
P.S.  Ideally, my "button" would actually be a foot-pedal beneath the testing table, which would, in some way, communicate with the camcorder - but I'd be plenty satisfied if I could accomplish this via some button operation on the camcorder itself.

If the camcorder records stereo sound and you are only interested in mono recordings, the foot switch could trigger an oscillator that injected a short tone on the left channel and the inverted tone on the right channel.
During regular playback where you might be mixing left and right audio to one mono audio signal, the tone will be unheard because of electrical cancellation of the signals. However, if you had a small electronic circuit that looked for the presence of the tone on (say) the right channel then it would find it.
A better version would use a balanced differential amplifier to look at both left and right together - pure mono sounds (i.e. the sounds you collected in your recording) would be totally cancelled by the differential mixing in the amplifier whereas the "tone" you injected would be plainly and unambiguously heard reminding you to play back the regular recording at this point.

this is indeed a crafty solution.  it seems as though it would still be somewhat of an undertaking to scan through all of the footage in search of the marker tones...

@jptacek I'm guessing here but if the "playback system" has a remote pause feature, something could be interfaced that allowed you to wander off and make a cup of tea and in the meanwhile if the "tone detector" heard the tone it could pause the playback. Another way would be let the playback commence from the beginning and record the "secret" audio onto a wave file on a PC - then examine the wave file afterwards to see where the events occur in time - something like audacity or wavelab would do this. No need to be present throughout. Maybe audio works on fast forward too?

This was a feature on some Mini DV camcorders back in the day.  I know the Canon GL2 supported it, but as I recall I think it also required a MiniDV tape with a circuit in it that cost extra and I'm not sure if you can still get them anymore.  Having to deal with capturing tapes is also a bit of a pain.
If you don't mind a momentary break in the footage, you can timecode your footage based on the actual time in some DSLRs and then can take a photo (which interrupts the recording for a second) and the meta data will also have the time of the photo.  It's then just a matter of looking for the timestamps of the photos within the video to find the behavior.

I use Cut Notes (warning, paywall) application for iPad.
Long story short,

Define your own "events", grouped by category
During recording or playback, click the buttons, and they are recorded along with the timeline;
Export the data into your favorite post-mastering application or just into a plain text:
Since the projects are editable, it's easy to take your initial notes while recording and improve them during further previews.

See Cut Notes Overview video on Youtube.
I'm pretty sure there are also a plenty of free apps available as well as apps for other platforms like Android.


text:
Help with the epiphan vga2usb frame grabber
I have been using the lowest level model of the Epiphan VGA2USB Frame Grabber to capture a video stream over vga.
It is an okay piece of hardware. It is just very expensive for what it is and there does not seem to be any other options.
Here is my problem:
I typically capture slide presentations in 1024 x 768, so it should default to 10 fps, using the Epiphan capture tool software that came with it. I would think that the video should be pretty seamless at 10 fps, but it is not. There seems to be a lot of horizontal lines for about two seconds after every slide change.
Here is what I am thinking it might be:

The capture tool software that came with it is junk. I notice now that they have a new suggestions section. Perhaps any verification on these would be sufficient.
The cheapest model of the frame grabber is not that good, and if I want to eliminate this problem I need to get one of the better models.

Here's how you can help:

Verify that it is the capture tool and suggest a different software to use.
Verify that it is the frame grabber itself and suggest options.

Is there a reason you need to do it this way?  Would screen capture or direct editing with the presentation be a better option?  This seems like an odd device since it seems like there are better approaches than using it in most cases.

@AJHenderson Yes, I am stuck capturing externally. The venue is live conferences where a speaker is giving a lecture and we record the slides as they are presented and mix it together with video of the speaker as well. I need to bring in a video feed of whatever is on the presentation screen.

Does it have to be VGA out or is DVI or HDMI out an option?  It simplifies the problem significantly if you can start with a digital signal.

I'd first try some different software to see if it is a hardware shortcoming or not.  If it is a hardware short coming, I'd go for a different approach to getting the highest quality signal possible.
Based on your needs to operate with minimal gear, taking the fewest devices and trying to keep the best quality, I'd probably try and go with something like an HDMI capture device like the Black Magic Intensity (which will work over either Thunderbolt or USB3) and then for dealing with analog signals coming in, I'd probably pick up a scan converter to handle the analog signals.
DVI's pretty much cross compatible with HDMI, so if you can get either DVI or HDMI, you should be able to use it with the Intensity directly.


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Wedding Footage from beach - fixing over-exposure and colour balance?
Ok, so I just got married, and I had a friend video-tape the ceremony and reception for me.
The camera was a Sony PMW-EX3, and I've imported the footage into Final Cut Pro X.
The wedding was outdoors on a beach, and the footage appears quite burnt out. Also, the colours don't quite look right to me.
I'm used to shooting RAW for digital photos, and being able to adjust exposure and colour balance easily - however, I have no idea how to do the equivalent for video, so I'm sort of fumbling along.
The footage currently looks like this:

I had a look at this tutorial (

), and I've tried
So I dragged the exposure sliders around a bit, and I got this:

The exposure is still not create, and the colour balance is off though? Anyhow, I did choose to analyse colour balance when I imported the video, so I thought I'd click on "Balance: Analyzed" in the inspector. Then I end up with this:

The above seems quite over-saturated. I thought there might be some equivalent of clicking on a neutral gray for setting white balance, but I can't find it.
What steps would you guys recommend to fix this footage? I'm hoping something can be done...
Cheers,
Victor

What you are trying to do is impossible given how bad the original footage is.  I'm honestly pretty amazed at the result in the third shot given the original state.  Unfortunately, video frames are the equivalent of a series of JPEG images.  It is possible to shoot RAW video on ultra high end cameras, but the data rates are completely off the charts (around 90 to 100MB per second or worse).  The information is simply gone and there is no way to recover it if it was clipped out.
It sucks, but that's the long and short of it.  That's why I always do a pre-roll test prior to filming at weddings, but that's what experience of doing professional wedding videography for 3 to 4 years gets you.


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Two green screens in FCPX?
I am a beginner FCPX user and am currently working on setting up a green screen studio for interviews/podcasts/etc. I am planning on painting a wall with this paint and using a this for my floor mat (in the light green color option). I am planning on doing the keying in either FCPX or Motion, but I am unsure if it (they) will be able to handle to slightly different colors in the same chroma key frame. Is it possible to make the floor and wall, even though they are slightly different shades of green, into one seamless green screen in FCPX or Motion?
Thanks!

Do you really need to have long shots of your talent?  Having them stand on green is going to make spill more of a problem.  I'm not saying don't go for it if you feel like you should.  I'm saying sticking to medium shots and closeups with a subject that is physically separated from everything green keys way better and easier, especially in fcpx, which doesn't have the best keyer. If you do go full body, use some soft magenta back light on your talent to reduce green spill.

It depends, you can typically adjust a tolerance for the level of removal.  If the colors of green are closer than the next nearest color, you should be fine, if not, then you would have to do two keys, though I would expect you should be able to stack two layers to get the necessary transparency.  (Basically keying over a keyed image, since the result of a keyed image is a layer with alpha.)
Keep in mind that lighting will also be a significant concern and you could always paint the floor tiles as well to get the same color on everything.


text:
47.952 instead of 48 fps?
I work with some clips, all taken from the same camera, which have the exact following characteristics (apart from the duration of course):
Video: 00:03:21.806, 47.952 fps progressive, 1920x1440x12, AVC
Audio: 00:03:21.835, 48,000 Hz, Stereo, AAC

The spec on the camera says "48 fps" but as seen above the software I load the clip shows 47.952.
My questions are:

Is this a thing of the specific camera? Or is 47.952 some kind of standard number for the 48 fps?
Should I render my final mix at 48 or 47.952 fps?

would help to know the camera make/model. Could be a 24/1.001fps capture but for a variety or reasons it might be counting fields as progressive frames. If it is a "prosumer" camera lots of manufacturers use their own proprietary names and cut corners to advertise functions you might otherwise pay more for with a professional camera.

Yeah! Welcome to the good ol' world of analog television. When they originally introduced color television and put a high frequency chroma signal on top of the black- and white luma signal, they had to introduce a freqeuncy shift to prevent the signal from bleeding over into the audio .... oh, you don't want to know. Srsly! Even in times of digital video this stuff will hunt us around for another hundred years.
To make it short: this is normal, and your computer handles it badly.
Those framerates are very common, for every plain frame rate there is the garbled version, because the framerate got shifted down by one thousands part:
24fps vs. 24000 / 1001 = 23.976...
25fps vs. 25000 / 1001 = 24.975...
30fps vs. 30000 / 1001 = 29.970...
Do the math - this is exactly what you experience too. Even worse: those numbers cannot be precisely represented in binary. Not even with long floating point numbers.
Video editing and player software is normally designed to somewhat compensate and prevent A/V desync anyway, either by dropping a frame every once in a while, or by doing ungodly things to the audio stream.
I would recommend you check the settings of your camera to find out if it really does not have a plain 48fps / 50fps setting. I do not think that in the digital age we are still supposed to keep up with this 1950s electron tube hack.

There must be a setting on the camera that you're not describing which causes this shift. The difference is exactly the same as 24 vs 23.976 or 30 vs 29.97, which is the ratio 1000/1001 -- the 'color vs mono' ratio that originated with NTSC color and should have completely ended with digital standards. Maybe that will offer a clue to finding the setting.
In any case, I would treat these as 48 fps. There's no advantage (and plenty of downside) to still using these bastardized frame rates. Your editing system should allow you to import 47.952 cleanly to a 48fps timeline.


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How can I draw my own textures for my 3D objects?
As the title says; how can I draw my own textures using softwares like photoshop?

It could be helpful if you could expand the question a bit to include more specifically what you are trying to accomplish.  More details in questions tend to give better answers:)

There are many ways this can be done.  Historically, the main way was to paint the area of each surface and then create a texture map in the 3d software that would take the portions of the image and project them on to the geometry.  You simply had to know the shapes of your surfaces.  (Sometimes the software could even output a template to fill in, but it depends on the 3d software you are using.)
Now, with modern versions of Photoshop, they've simplified the process a bit as long as your 3d software supports exporting and importing a compatible format.  Photoshop now actually supports loading a 3d geometry and will let you paint directly on to it.
While the specifics depend on file format and version of Photoshop, the relevant help documentation can be found here.  Basically you load the geometry in to Photoshop, go to 3D and 3D Paint Mode and then use Photoshop fairly normally to paint on to the geometry.


text:
Is there still a reason to buy camcorders?
My main goals are family events.
So I would like a nice zoom & 1080/60p and a a wifi connection would be nice too.
and I am not comparing camcorders vs dslr (too bulky) only vs point & shoot.
At first I thought of buying panasonic v720.
Then I saw that many Point and shoots have my desired requirements.
Do I really need a camcorder or will a good Point and shoot will do?
It sounds like that the one intended to be a video camera will be better but how?

This is a duplicate of http://avp.stackexchange.com/questions/2859/what-are-the-advantages-camcorders-have-over-zoom-digital-cameras

Yes, but is is from two years ago.

It depends on the type of camcorder you get.  Most point and shoots use a cheap CMOS sensor.  The problem with this is that CMOS is read sequentially by line and results in an effect called screen tearing.
Basically, as you pan quickly, the lines at the top of the frame are in a different position than in the bottom so that you end up with a jello like effect where vertical lines become diagonal.  A decent camcorder should use a CCD sensor which can capture an entire image at the same time and thus you get smooth panning.
While high end DSLRs have done a pretty good job at accounting for this issue by reading their sensor very quickly, low end consumer models, particularly of point and shoots, will have a substantial issue with this.  If money is tight and you can only get one, then, yes, a Point and Shoot should do a passable job for home video, but there is certainly a lot to be gained by using a camcorder of similar quality.
Another factor to consider is that there are often time limits on how long of videos can be captured without stopping on still cameras.  You can thank the European Union for this fantastic bit of idiocy because they decided to charge a significant tax on video cameras and defined them as anything that can shoot 30 minutes of video or more at a time.  Due to this, most camera manufacturers place a completely artificial limit of 29 minutes, 59 seconds on continuous recording from any still camera.  Some do make different versions outside of the EU, but others seem to be worried that it will make the EU come down on them if they only do it for the one model for the EU.

Thanks. I know that effect you mentioned. But looking on current PS models zooming and moving (as this http://vimeo.com/64054434) I think that's pretty much excellent quality. This is cheaper from Panasonic 720p, has similar spec and is also a decent stills camera.

@rails - it is actually pretty obvious there, but if it is sufficient for your purposes and you don't need the longer run times, then you may well be ok.


text:
How to smooth out video
My video jumps when playing (and I know it has nothing to do with my harddrive, cause it does the same thing on my phone in the same spots), all through the video.  Like every couple seconds it jumps, is there a program out there that will fix this?
For Instance a program that can smooth out the video somehow?
That would be super cool!  And preferably something that is free...
Thanks guys/gals :)

Could you maybe post a short example that shows the jumping?

It sounds like the problem is probably what is known as dropped frames.  There is unfortunately not any particularly good fix.  With dropped frames, information is actually completely missing for the frames where there was no update, thus there is nothing to play during those frames.
Depending on the length of time that is dropped, it may be possible to interpolate frames, but this is not a perfect process and will generally produce substandard results.
Basically, the idea with interpolation is that the computer tries to guess what things are the same in the frame before and the frame after the missing information and then invents frames that go in-between, but since it doesn't know what objects are, it has to make a lot of guesses and motion isn't always linear, so if it is more than a frame or two, it won't be particularly good results.
Generally, if possible, the recommendation is re-shoot rather than try to interpolate, but you can interpolate if you don't have the ability to re-shoot.  This problem also generally occurs when you have insufficient write speed to stay ahead of the video, so you may want to consider a faster memory card for future video so that you can avoid dropped frames in the future.
This question over on superuser talks about doing so with some free tools.


text:
Audio/Video Out of Sync with Samsung NX1000 Camera - Why?
I'm a total digital video beginner, having a weird (to me) issue in the music videos I've shot with my Samsung NX1000, which is that the video and audio are out of sync with each other, but not in a consistent way (to be clear, I'm talking about video/audio both captured by the camera itself - I'm not using any external mic for the audio). Here's the rundown:

Slightly out of sync when played back in the camera
More out of sync in VLC
Very out of sync in:
Finder windows (when quick-look previewed by hitting space bar)
QuickTime Player 10
Final Cut Pro X

First I imported the movies from my camera to my Mac over USB cable, using the Image Capture app. The files are in .mp4 format, and the related codecs are H.264 and AAC.
Then I tried importing movies directly into FCPX (ticking Optimize and choosing to convert the camera native format into ProRes 422.
Both methods result in un-synced audio/video. However, the amount of delay differs depending on how a given clip was imported. I opened several clips in VLC and was finally able to sync things by adding an audio delay: 200ms for a clip imported with Image Capture, 300ms for a clip imported with FCPX.
Does anyone know what's going on here? I'm sure there are apps I could use to sync the video and audio, but if anyone can help me solve this problem in the camera in the first place, that would really speed up my workflow.
Thanks!

MacBook Pro 5,3
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.8 GHz
8GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M

I have a similar problem and that's how I found your question online today... The Mp4 file from my nx1000 was imported as it is on adobe premiere cs3.
The audio and video seem to have same starting and ending point, but the video alone is faster than the original as if it was stretched, and the audio has the normal speed but ends in the middle of the original sound track.
Knowing that I imported the file to a project with the same settings as video, 1080i 29.9fps... I tried again with 25fps and with a video card and without a video card... In vain
The only way I got it right, is unfortunately by decoding it on a software called procoder, to a different format (i chose *.mov), and it worked like a charm on my editing software. But of course I lost resolution... I did not buy the nx1000 so i can decode it and lose resolution for editing!
There should be an answer, I hope you found yours!

@DrMayhem - the user did provide a solution by using a transcoder.  It hopefully isn't the ideal solution, but it shares what they had tried and failed with and what they finally got to work.  That's a solid answer even if I hope there is a better one.

You are right. I managed to miss that. Sorry.


text:
Trying to add text to a video file and save it as an mpeg to be played in a slide show
I have been asked to create a slide for a viewsonic slideshow player that has a rotating diamond at the bottom, and "Your Diamond Store" above.
I am having a hard time figuring out how to do this with what I have and this is way out of my normal scope.
I have adobe cs4 suite and standard apple software.  Can anyone please help?
Thanks!!

You don't mention the model, but if "slideshow player" = "Digital Picture Frame", none of the ones on their website support video.

Either After Effects or Premiere will do this for you no problem.  I'd probably use After Effects for simplicity since it is easier to understand the layers there.  Either use a text effect or use Illustrator to make the text a bit nicer and import it in as a layer in After Effects.  Position the video that it is playing over as the bottom layer then import the text layer and position it over the background as necessary.
For the rotating diamond, you would need a rotating diamond that has a transparent background to the layer.  This is easiest to do with 3d graphics software, though you could also do it by rotating an actual diamond and keying out the background from around it.
On the other hand, the best looking approach (since a diamond refracts the surroundings) would be to bring it in to a professional 3d package and use the video as an environment map for the refraction to be correct and then export it as a series of images with alpha that can be composited back in as a source in After Effects.  Since the diamond will look like it is refracting the image it is over, it will be far more believable as a diamond in the scene.
I'm not sure if Blender (the most popular free 3d software) can support environment maps or not, but if it can, that would be your best bet for approaching that.  (Sadly, I use commercial 3D software so I've never learned Blender which is much more limited, someone else might be able to provide more insight on that though.)

AJ you are my hero.  Thanks so much for all of your help.  So far so good, but silly question, what do I do to make it an mpeg after I create it??  Do I flatten or merge?  I'm so sorry.  I'm lost.  I do have the text and video up there, at least!

I am trying to render it in the render under compositions, but it keeps telling me there are errors.

@aleda - you should only have to add the finished composition to the render queue.  Set best settings and then for the encoder, choose the format you need and specify your render options.  It will then export the whole thing when you run the queue.  Alternately you could also open the project in Adobe Media Encoder and tell it which composition you want to render.  Adobe Media Encoder is probably a slightly more user friendly way to go if you aren't familiar with the intimate details of AE as AE can get pretty advanced.  I don't recall how advanced Media Encoder was in CS4 though.

What is it saying are the errors?

mismatch between  output module settings and transcode settings

property data invalid

I think I can only save it as a mov file.  Is this meaning that I don't have anything to run an mpeg file?

@Aleda - There are mpeg encoders included with it.  You have to choose the format from the option below quality level though.

It's when I do that that I get the error.

@aledapowell - based on the description, it sounds like your composition has a different aspect ratio or resolution than you are specifying in the encoder.  Can you post a screen shot of the settings you are configuring in the encoder options?

Umm....I've never done that.  :~)  never needed to.


text:
What video switching application is used for Apple's Keynotes?
I know apple uses keynote for the presentation software for its keynotes, but I can't figure out what they use for their video switching for picture-in-picture display.

They are probably using some kind of a live switcher for that rather than software, but there is no real way to tell what they would be using.  To keep quality in live environments still generally requires using specialized hardware though.


text:
AE: Frame rate and animating solids
For an After Effects project that animates mostly solids and Illustrator objects, what frame rate should one use to achieve smooth visual effects?
I'm currently working with 23.9 fps but it renders a bit choppy. Can I go up to 60 fps, or are there any downsides?
Yesterday, I saw the video at the start of the Apple keynote (http://www.apple.com/apple-events/october-2013/) which has a great level of smoothness to it.
Is that achieved through higher fps or an other technique?

24 FPS should be plenty smooth, anything about 15fps should appear fairly smooth to the human eye.  There are two possibilities I can think of, first, you may be encoding to a fairly low compression format that produces large files, if so, your computer may be having trouble displaying the frames in time.  This can result in lag or frame skips which make the video look much less smooth.
Second, you may need to apply some motion blur depending on the type of motion and objects you have.  While it makes the image less sharp, we naturally expect a certain amount of blur on things in motion and our brain sometimes things it is less smooth if there isn't a small amount of blur.  After Effects can render this, but it's not on by default as it adds additional render time.


text:
Recommend a good online video host?
I have been using Vimeo for a good long while to host our corporate videos. I like the service, and it is certainly affordable, but I am quickly outgrowing it. I now have almost 200 videos warehoused in there, most of which I can't get rid of. Plus, Vimeo is just so weak when it comes to management. Finding the right video can be sometimes like finding a needle in a haystack, even with decent metatags. I have been looking at Brightcove and they seem pretty decent, if very expensive for my needs. Can you recommend someone?

This is off-topic on this site, I believe. You might find AlternativeTo a useful resource.

@NReilingh - I think it is probably on topic.  Broadcast/content distribution is a portion of audio/video production and streaming is a form of content distribution, so I'd vote it as on-topic.  I do not however have any suggestions because I've always just rolled my own.

Depending on how often the videos are watched and how big are they in total?  Rolling your own might work.  For my video streaming needs, I use a dedicated Windows server in a data center (can be as cheap as $110 a month, including a terabyte of disk space and unmetered 100Mb/sec connectivity) and use the included Windows Media Streaming Services to provide streaming video.  Alternately, if you need more cross platform support, there are other stream server software packages you can buy that will allow easy management and streaming of other videos and you can install them on the server.  If your volume of viewers is sufficiently low (less than 20 or 30 simultaneous viewers) then rolling your own may work on a 100 megabit dedicated connection.


text:
Best way to create closed captions in Premiere CS6? No 3rd party software!
First let me get this out of the way: I can not use any third party software to load captions into my videos. With that said, what is the best way to get Closed Captions into my videos (it's about 5mins long) with Adobe Premiere Pro CS6?
IF I must type it in, that's fine...but tell me how. I'm a newbie. Thanks.

To answer your question, you can't create Closed Captions in PP CS6. It's a new feature only available CC onwards.
Source: From Adobe forum
You have a few choices -- there are two commercial products that I have used and know about, to create sidecar closed captioning files that are usable in PPRO and follow industry standarads for CC: CPC (www.cpcweb.com) makes a authoring program called 'MacCaption' for MAC and 'Caption Maker' for WIN. Also, a German company (www.zeitanker.com) makes a program called 'Annotation Edit'.

Have you perhaps considered the Adobe Premiere documentation?  There is an import option under File... Import.  They can either be imported as a sidecar file or embedded in a clip.  You'd most likely be using the sidecar.  The documentation is for CC, but the import is very similar.
Note this can only be exported to tape though.  There is unfortunately no option to output them embedded in a file in CS6.

That link is for Adobe Premiere CC, not CS6. Not an option for this case, unfortunately.

@redshift - the steps are the same I think, it just will only run out to tape.  It can't output them embedded to a file.


text:
What is the difference between Refresh Rate and Flicker Rate?
Can anyone explain in detail the difference between Refresh rate and Flicker rate in a CRT ?

I won't answer because it may be a term of art, but whenever I see "flicker rate" used (and I just did a quick book search on the phrase as well), it appears to refer to refresh rate. Even in technical papers.

I've never even heard of flicker rate, so my guess is that @horatio is correct.

Guessing? I take it you both never had the pleasure of quality control testing for medical film recorders.

In the context of a CRT vs. flat panel, that is a Cathode Ray (vacuum) Tube, you have to consider the following:
1) Video sync as broken down to Vertical and Horizontal scan rates.
2) Phosphor persistence (the length of time the phosphor coating on the inside of the CRT will glow). "Phosphors are available with persistences ranging from less than one microsecond to several seconds."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode_ray_tube
These two factors will determine the overall picture quality with regard to time.
Refresh rate would be best explained as vertical frames per second, for NTSC it is 60 fps.
Flicker rate includes the refresh rate plus factoring in the persistence of the phosphor.
Long persistent phosphors were employed in radar screens and O'Scopes as to allow objects to last longer on the screen while shorter persistent phosphors were employed in most consumer TVs to reduce motion blur.
"Flicker occurs on CRTs when they are driven at a low refresh rate, allowing the brightness to drop for time intervals sufficiently long to be noticed by a human eye..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flicker_(screen)

I don't believe you are incorrect, but I note that "Flicker Rate" is not a phrase that occurs in the Wikipedia article you linked. Obviously flicker is a function of time as you described, but do you have anything which contains the (jargon phrase) flicker rate? i.e. is this a "term of art"?

This behavior could be described using a function of time, such as Flicker Rate = Frame Rate / Persistence of Phosphor. So not art, maybe jargon, but certainly physical fact aka science.

In the wiki link, there is a footnoted paper: persistence affects required brightness, not refresh. In that paper, the closest I could find to a term that resembled the OP's question was "flicker threshold frequency"

Good find ! however refresh rate will affect how much flicker one perceives so refresh rate and flicker are related so more science to boot. Thank you.

Horatio, another example would be the pulse rate of a fluorescent light which also uses a phosphor coating. If the phosphor persistence is significantly less than the energizing pulse you would see flicker, or if you took a high speed motion image capture of the average fluorescent light, and then slowed it down you could see the Delta brightness aka flicker.

Refresh rate is the frequency at which an image in a moving picture system is redrawn on screen. In modern video systems, for instance, the screen is redrawn 59.97 times per second. The refresh rate is 59.97. Motion picture projections flash a new image at 48 times per second. Film projectors flash each frame of film twice, which is how you get from 24 frames per second to a 48 image per second refresh rate.
Flicker rate refers to how rapidly images must be presented to in order that a human viewer does not perceive a "flicker" between images. It is a threshold number. Presentations above the "flicker rate" appear continuous while those below the flicker rate appear to flicker on and off.
The actual flicker rate varies with circumstances but the "flicker rate" is historically agreed to be 48 presentations per second, plus or minus. This is why projectors flash each frame twice, turning the 24 frames per second into 48 flashes per second to hide the flicker, and why old films, shot at 16-18fps flicker noticeably on screen.


text:
Which low budget video camera would be appropriate for making travel/advenutre short films?
I run a small travel company in a remote Himalayan region. We are very much interested to shoot some interesting films of your trips and adventures. As our budget is low (somewhere around $200 to $300, what would be the best camera to buy which can give us professional HD quality videos. We have been checking out GoPro but are confused if a proper camcorder would be better option. Would appreciate if someone can help with the best buy for our project.

For your budget and situation, GoPro is probably the best bet as it is exceptionally light and a good value for the money.  It doesn't have a variable length lens, so it can be a little limiting in shot composition, but you won't get the same video quality, weight and durability in any other camera for the same price.  That's why they are the market leader in that segment.
Most other cameras that are that cheap sacrifice either quality and durability or size for more versatility and consumer friendly features, but at that low of a price point, there isn't enough budget for making the device to keep much of any quality with any kind of versatility.  (As an example, an optical zoom lens of decent quality would probably take 1/4 to 1/3 of the budget of a camera in the price range you are looking for.  That doesn't leave much for sensor and processing electronics.)

Thanks for the help. GoPro it is mostly then! What are good budget HD variable length options and how much do they cost? Or do you think it is better to invest some more and get a proper camcorder, if we talk about long term.

@Vaivhav - that's a much more complex question that depends on what shooting styles you need.  If you don't need rapidly panning shots, DSLRs are actually incredibly popular for high end video due to the relatively cheap cost and interchangeable lenses.  Professional video from my experience tends to go from GoPro ($200 - $700 range) to DSLRs ($700 to $10,000 range) to professional video camera rigs ($10k to $20k+).  Under certain conditions, you might see cheaper professional cameras in the $3 - $5k range take over from DSLRs.

Also, GoPro has fewer moving parts to break when you're in the middle of nowhere. That added reliability is a big selling point for me when I travel. I use them as "b" cameras, and have had nothing but good results.


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Visualising geo data on a map
Hi I have an interesting task I want to achieve. I currently manage a website that acts as a tracking system for a popular piece of flight simulation software. Currently we take a dump of the lat/lon and other data of everybody flying every 5 minutes. This has been done constantly for the past two years. There is close to a million records now in the database.
What I would really like to produce is a video of the world showing these lines being drawn in a sped-up fashion however this isn't really my area and I can't think of the best way I could go about this in such a programatic fashion. I've seen similar types of videos done before but has anyone got any ideas of what routes I could go down to make this visualisation?
Thanks,
Rory

I just tried to visualise all the data at once in Google Earth with some interesting results: http://cl.ly/image/2b0x1N09270X http://cl.ly/image/3G233e0m3N3C now I just need to work out how I can make more use of this.

Unless you want to make some really fancy animations I would merge this question with https://gis.stackexchange.com/ if thats ok for you.
Like quade said this is would be possible with After Effects with a lot of knowledge about After Effects and some After Effects scripting skills.
I don't think you want to go down that road but instead use software made for this purpose.

I think this is probably less of a question for video production people as much as it is for Geographic Information Systems (GIS) people.
GIS Forum on Stack Exchange
While you might be able to find an After Effects (AE) wizard who knows some scripting tricks to make this happen, my guess is more folks over in a GIS forum know how to do this in something like ArcGIS.
Additionally, laying out a million records is going to be an awful lot to ask of a program like AE or Motion, while that amount of detail is pretty much what ArcGIS exists to deal with.
My guess is if this is a one-shot project, you could probably hire some college student to turn it around for you.  If it's going to be something on-going and constantly updated for your web site with a million plus data points, that might be also do-able, but a much bigger programming issue.

There will be commercial and open source solutions to this , thanks for including the link to GIS-SE all GIS related questions welcome.  @Rory can ask there


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How to release the work anonymously under the free licence?
The goal is to release the work anonymously, but not into the public domain or as CC0, but rather under the Share-Alike licence. However, most of the licences require reusers to identify the original creator of the work, which they will be unable to do.

The route that most people take, is to release it 'pseudonymously' rather than anonymously. So you just make up a pseudonym and use that in the copyright/licence statement.
A better approach may be to use the little-known CC-SA 1.0 licence, which was unfortunately retired by Creative Commons due to it not being used a lot. This licence requires a reuser to publish their altered versions with the same freedoms, but does not place the requirement to find out who was the original author.


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how to trim and render multiple sequences in premiere
I have 30 sequences which are syncronized to start at same time (different cameras of one sport event). Those sequences are couple of hours length.
I need to render some segments of all sequences, lets say  0:10:00 to 0:30:00 and 1:10:00 to 1:30:00. How to do it efficently?
I tried to set time range in media encoder, range settings apply only to one encoding task, not to all selected ones.
The only way known for me is to create 60 more sequences and trim them to length, then export to media encoder and render, but there must be easier way!

I would honestly probably just punch in the range settings for each of the renders separately in Adobe Media Encoder.  It's likely the easiest way to go about it.  It's not that long or hard of a process to punch in start and end times for 30 clips.
The only other remote possibility (I don't think it will work though) would be to see if you can make a preset for the times to be rendered.  You could then apply that preset, but I don't think that information can be stored in a preset. (I don't have Adobe Media Encoder in front of me at the moment.)

As a programmer at first i've remembered that some of adobe products are scriptable, unfortunately premiere is not one of them, but this thought reminded me about mouse and keyboard automation. I have copied all source sequences two times, than added prefix to their names(one macro run for each prefix), than  set in and out with anouther macro (one run per sequence). Much easier, but still way too many hand work and complications.

If you want to render a lot of clips from one sequence, you can use markers and After Codecs software. It allows to render a lot of clips from one sequence (multirender function).
You can learn more here about this:
https://www.autokroma.com/blog/Batch-Export-Clips-Quickly-Premiere-Pro-with-our-Panel/
In case if you need to render parts like 0:10:00 to 0:30:00 and 1:10:00 to 1:30:00.
And you need to render these two parts for example for video track 1, video track 2, 3, 4 etc... Then I think you can create the script with AutoHotKey or similar software, that will make subclip or subsequence with needed tracks for you. It can be done using only keyboard.
Maybe ExtendScript will work too in this case, but it need to test.

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


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Why to music producers not bother with CD-TEXT
I still like CDs, buy one from a shop and slip it into my car, easy - no encoding, file transfers etc etc...
CD-TEXT has been around for a LONG time, but I have only ever come across 1 or 2 albums / singles where the producer bothers to put the CD-TEXT data on the disk.
Given that it is a simple, open and free thing to do, and nearly all CD players (home and car) support displaying of CD-TEXT data, why is it not more widely used?

I'm not sure this question is really answerable since I don't think there is any technical reason, they just don't bother.  Any particular guess as to why they don't is just that, speculation.  Someone might be able to share for one location if they were part of a decision not to, but that only applies to their case, so this is really very opinion based and not specifically answerable.  Also, hello to a fellow Photography member.

It could well be guess-based - however sometimes simple things like this have a real reason, like copyright or licensing etc. And hi!

The only answers I could quickly find are that they either don't think about it, don't want to have to deal with clients that supplied incorrect track information, have a duplication house who's software can't support it (apparently there are some errors in one of the major pieces of software used by duplication companies) or think that the CD-TEXT data can result in a slightly slower cue time on the CD.

All of these sound like plausible reasons but without any real evidence they're just speculation.

@WarriorBob - agreed.  I put them there as everything I could gather about it.  There was some evidence I found about the duplication house software error, but fundamentally I don't think this question is definitively answerable as I don't think there is a definitive reason. (Which is also why I simultaneously voted to close as primarily opinion based.)  I just generally try to be as helpful as I can be unless there is a better answer already.  Not expecting any upvotes on this as it isn't a good answer, just better than nothing.  :)

I understand, and that is indeed why I didn't upvote (although I didn't downvote either). I do think it's answerable though, if someone can provide some reasonable citation such as an interview with someone in the industry who would be in a position to know. Edit: kind of like this question.


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AE : Using a drawn brush as a mask
Is there a way to mask brush strokes like you can with a pen?
At present, Im using a pen to create a mask then generate a stroke (Effects>Generate>Stroke).
I then use reveal putting a keyframe on the end of the effect to reveal the comp following the pen's stroke if that makes sense.
I want to use the same type of effect by revealing a larger background image, but the stroke's maximum width using the above technique is 50 which is not big enough.
From what i understand, brush strokes are vectors in AE so is the same type of thing possible using a brush to create a mask?
thanks

If you use the brush on a layer, it actually applies the "paint" effect to the layer. If you paint on a layer with the brush and expand the properties for effects>paint>brush 1> you'll see that there is a start and end setting that can be animated, allowing you to animate the stroke.

Paint on a solid layer (in the layer panel). Select the path of the paint object by putting a keyframe on the paint effect's brush in the timeline and copying that keyframe.
Now add a mask by right-clicking on the layer and choosing a 'new mask'. Put a keyframe in the mask on the timeline. Select that keyframe and paste.
Now you can turn off the eyeball on the paint effect and you'll have it's shape as a unstroked mask on that mask keyframe.  Select that mask path keyframe (you may or may not see the control points) and apply a stroke.
Thicken up the stroke (with 'Brush Size' in the Stroke effect in the timeline) until you like it. Make the stroke white. Now add a Key effect - probably you'll want a 'Luma Key.'  Switch the view from the Layer view to the Composition view. In the timeline, under the Luma Key effect, select 'Key Out Brighter' and the dial in the correct 'Threshold' until you can see the layer below (you've got one, right?)
That's how to turn a brush stroke into a mask.


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How can I automatically remove pauses from a video?
I have dozens of video files containing scenes of movement interspersed with 5-10 second periods of nothing happening (many identical frames in a row). There's no audio track and I'd like to strip the identical frames to remove those pauses and keep only the movement.
Is there a (preferably free) tool to accomplish this?

This can be accomplished with the mpdecimate filter in the free program ffmpeg:
ffmpeg -i "in.mp4" -vf "mpdecimate" "out.mp4"

Welcome to AVP and thanks for sharing what you found to address the situation.

Left a note on a similar, but different question: http://avp.stackexchange.com/questions/8012/removing-silence-and-no-movement-from-videos


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Magic Lantern follow focus
Using Magic Lantern on a 600D. With Follow Focus and Rack Focus, the camera always misses the focus point I set. Sometimes it's just one or two movements too far but it's always too many. And if you focus back and forth a lot it drifts further and further. I've tried various settings and both a Canon 50mm f/1.8 as well as a Canon EFS 18-55mm f/3.5 (maybe slightly better).
Is there something wrong with my lenses? Or camera? Or is this normal?

The problem is that cheap lenses (and even some expensive ones) do not know where the focus ring is actually positioned. They only know if they are in focus and which way to run the motor to get more in focus. For focusing, they don't generally need access to this kind of information because they get feedback via the AF sensor about if they need to keep going.
When shooting video, the PDAF sensor is covered and the only way to verify positioning is to continue until contrast decreases. This is why you get the focus hunting issue with contrast based auto focus such as what is used on most LiveView modes (unless the camera has a hybrid sensor that includes PDAF pixels.)
What Magic Lantern is probably doing to get around this is running the motor for a fixed amount of time to approximate the movement, but in cheaper lenses, the motors are particularly imprecise, so it is going to often miss the mark. There might also be an option to have it use CBAF for confirmation, but that will result in at least a minimal amount of focus hunting.
There's still no real software fix for what is really a matter of needing to be able to move from position A to position B exactly unless you have a lens that actually provides exact position information back to the camera (in which case, this information may be able to be used by Magic Lantern for giving an exact follow or rack.)

Thanks for the great explanation. Is it possible for cheap lenses (like the f/1.8 50mm) to vary a lot in accuracy between each other?
And is there a list of all lenses with focus ring position reporting?

@mel - I have no idea about the accuracy between lenses.  I would expect it's probably possible since it is just a timing thing and, particularly as lenses age, the performance of the motor is going to also change.  As far as the type of communication the lenses do, I'm not sure.  STM lenses should be able to communicate bi-directionally, but the exact list I'm not sure about since that might not even be disclosed by the manufacturers in some cases.


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Adding image to a video file using ffmpeg
I have created a OGG file from a stream of jpegs using fmpeg within a c# application.  I would like to know if it is possible to add an image (of same size and resolution) at a later date to this ogg file?
I have spent some time looking but found not even the subject matter anywhere. I could extract all the images from the ogg file and recreate the ogg file form all the images but this seems a long way of doing things.
Is it possible at all please? I would post code relevant if I had any.
Thanks...

According to Ogg specifications you can take two Ogg files and simply concatenate them together, so you can encode that single image as a single frame Ogg and then do the concatenation however you do that in your Operating System (you didn't state which one).
Unfortunately, while this is completely allowed by the standard, many players will have hard time playing such a file. Let's say you have two files that you concatenate, VLC, for example, will restart the time progress when it will get to the beginning of the second one, making it very difficult to control the position in the video. And some other players may completely freak out when they see that the file continues after it should have ended.
On GNU/Linux there is a oggCat inside libogg package, but i've had mixed success with it... sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. And to the best of my knowledge it's written in C++, so you won't be able to directly use the code from it anyhow, but it may give you clues of how to make it work.

Hi, that was useful - thanks. I would give u a thumbs up but I do not have a big enough reputation to do so..

No problem. I've actually remembered another thing. There was oggz-cat or something like that, inside liboggz (a different package), but unfortunately they've deprecated and discontinued that one. You may want so search for that one as well.


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Approximate render time in After Effects CS6
I'm working on a project with After Effects CS6. All videos I'm producing are quite similar to each other (both in terms of footage, montage, duration, resolution etc.). Currently it takes 6h to render (produce H264 file) 1h of 720p footage therefore rendering multiplier is 6.
I'm interested in approximate render time with upgraded configuration (with exact same software stack) in terms of rendering multiplier, or, in simpler terms - what would be my performance gain with new configuration? I'm not quite familiar how much CPU/RAM/GPU affects video rendering performance in After Effects so any help is appreciated.
If it helps, I don't use any special effects or plugins, pretty much just overlaying some images and text on top of multiple videos.
Current configuration

Core2Duo E6600 @ 2.40 GHz (Dual-Core, PassMark is 1,545)
4 GB of RAM
Nvidia GeForce 210 (512 MB)
OCZ Vertex 4 SSD 128 GB
Windows x64 with After Effects CS6

Potential new configuration

i7 4770 @ 3.40 GHz (Quad-Core, PassMark is 9,966)
16 GB or 32 GB of RAM
Nvidia GeForce GTX 760 (2 GB)
OCZ Vertex 4 SSD 128 GB
Windows x64 with After Effects CS6

As it stands this question is probably too specific for your situation to be useful in the future.  You do touch on what a good question would likely be... namely how much CPU/RAM/GPU affects rendering performance.  If you edit your question as such, you could probably make the determination yourself.  Also, the question would remain useful in the future.

This question appears to be off-topic because it is too specific/localized.

Sadly this isn't really answerable in an exact way.  There is simply too many variables at play.  How much motion is in your source and final videos as well as how computationally and memory dependent your effects that you are applying will all impact the overall performance.  Your best bet for getting an idea of the performance increase is to look at what is currently resource constrained on your system.  Are you maxing CPU usage, memory usage, graphics card processing or disk access?  Increasing whatever you are constrained by will produce a significant improvement.
Based on your current configuration though I can try to take a guess, you are really underpowered in pretty much all categories other than disk access.  Dual core 2.4 ghz with 4gb of ram and a low end 512mb graphics card is nothing when it comes to rendering.  I'm actually a bit surprised it manages an hour in 6 hours.
To give you an idea of a comparison, my computer is a 2.93 ghz original i7 with 12gb of ram, striped SSDs and a Radeon 6970 (which sadly can't make use of the CUDA support).  I can comfortably render clips that are higher than 1080p quality with 2 pass VBR compression in just over twice the runtime.  With the CUDA support on the GTX, you'd probably see even more of an improvement.  For your 720p case, I make no promises, but it wouldn't surprise me if it would run faster than real time.  (Not to mention the fact your experience just using the software will be infinitely better.)


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Vinyl converter spins 35.3 RPM -- How to correct?
My new "Numark PT-01 USB" turntable/vinyl converter actually spins 35.3 RPM instead of 33.3.  Notes sound slightly sharp.  Is there a good software to fix this?

Just about any audio editing software should be able to do this for you.  You simply need a "stretch" or "speed" adjustment.  If you don't know of any software, Audacity is a popular free option.  It's probably overkill for your needs, but should allow you to stretch the audio out to slow it down.


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Constant streaming to a web server
I have developed a desktop application that records motion from any video source - ie ip Camera, web cam (etc).
These motion 'clips' timestamps are uploaded to my server.
The Web user can log in and view these 'Time-clips'.
If they want to view any of these clips they double-click on it a request is made to a clients PC (in this scenario a very old laptop) and the images which are in jpeg format are encoded to ogg video format using ffmpeg.
Everything works well and fast.
Now, the client has complained/wants constant streaming of all the video captured from the client.
My second immediate thoughts was to have a base image on my server (or 2 - for caching)) and update the differences between 2 frames and upload and overlay the pixel changes on the base image on my server.
Now, as I have been informed before this actual process is how a video encoder works?
If that is the case I could save a lot of time using an encoder to change the base image on my server.
ffmpeg naturally comes to mind.
1). Does this sound reasonable to try to achieve?
2). Are they any pointers to what arguments I could use with ffmpeg to achieve all this?
I am very new to this fascinating subject and I am keen to learn and understand rather than copy & paste (sounds like a job interview!).
I am using C# as a programming tool but consider this is irrelevant to the initial question?
I very much welcome people's thoughts.
Thanks!

Old question, but as soon as you started talking about detecting pixel differences yourself, I just had to say:  It's not worth it to invent your own video codec.  Use h.264 or something.  Huge amounts of time have been put into optimizing the hell out of x264, for example.  And use ffmpeg's mpdecimate to drop similar frames before sending them to a video codec.

@PeterCordes I appreciate your comments. I have to admit when I originally posted this question I was VERY naive.  Now I am just naive :) Thanks

The way I've seen this done in other systems intended for CCTV is to encode every couple of frames compressed with something like MJPEG and then stream that to the client, the server component of ffmpeg, ffserver may be able to help you with that.
Of course, depending on your needs a different video codec may be more appropriate, particularly if you intend to send every frame in which case something like H.264 may be more efficient.

Hi, that has given me something to think about -thanks

A fixed camera is always going to have a LOT of temporal redundancy between frames, so you'll save a lot of bits with any codec that can use P and B frames (inter prediction).

So you have a client computer with a camera, and want to stream video from it to a server where it's archived and accessible?
client runs:
ffmpeg -i some_kind_of_input  -vf mpdecimate -c:v libx264 -preset medium -crf 25  some_kind_of_output
Choose an appropriate framerate to capture.  mpdecimate will run constantly at that framerate.  libx264 with your chosen preset will have to keep up with realtime to avoid dropped frames when there is motion going on, so mpdecimate isn't dropping any duplicate frames.
The output from that should be buffered somehow so upload to the server can lag behind the bitrate of the output when there is a burst of data (because of motion).
Your output will be VFR video.  There will be continuous 10fps or w/e bits, and other bits with 1 frame per hour or something.  x264 doesn't care, and most container formats have no trouble storing timestamps for each frame.  (e.g. mkv or mp4 are probably both ok choices.)
The server receives this video stream, and breaks it into 1 minute or 1 hour chunks or something.  (or maybe it's easier to break into chunks on the client side, and upload a chunk after it's done being written.  That would stop you from getting a realtime feed from your cam though.)
Or server just decodes it and stores jpg images with timestamps for filenames.  I'm not sure what kind of support ffmpeg has for VFR output to the image2 muxer (that's the "directory of image files" with %04d.jpg filenames, or w/e.  AFAIK, the %04d can only substitute frame numbers, not timestamps.)
Anyway, I just made all this up.  I'm sure you'll find lots of stuff if you google on motion detection security video.
IDK why this was on the recent-activity questions list, but since I read it, I figured I'd post an answer.

I too do not know why this has appeared on the recent-activity list but I am glad it did!  If I can work out how this happened I will attempt to regurgitate all my past questions :)  Also, your answer was A1!

Hi,  When i run this command via my C# app I just a get byte values of 255?  What have I missed?

you need ffmpeg installed, and some_kind_of_input is just a placeholder.  Same for output.  If you want to use it from within  a C# app, you might want to use the libav* API, instead of piping data through ffmpeg running as an external process.  I haven't used the api myself, but ffmpeg (the cmdline program) is just a front-end for libavformat, libavfilter, libavcodec, etc.  Have a look at http://www.ffmpeg.org/documentation.html, and google on using ffmpeg libraries.  (also note that there's a fork of ffmpeg called libav, so you'll get google hits on that.)

sorry, didn't take as long thinking about your reply as I should have.  So you mean the output file is filled with 0xff bytes?  Or the system() function call returns 255?  I really don't have a very good idea of exactly what you might have done.  You might want to ask a new question (with code and output) on stackoverflow.com (which would be the right place, since you're writing code.)  You might get answers telling you to use the library API instead of trying to pipe your data through the cmdline frontend, though.  If ffmpeg can read directly from the camera, that might be useful...

Yes, deleted as I thought it was a reply to another of my questions lol. Using mobile to reply, sorry

I prob need to post a new question. If use those command arguments in a c# pipe app I get a stream of 255 bytes. Before I got complete images before app stopped. I will need to get to a PC to use this in a dos windows and capture the standards error

Peter Thanks for those links you gave me.  the C# is just medium I can use.  It was notiecable that every raw byte was 255 with those command arguments you kindly supplied.  I need to now try and replicate it on the command line and try to get a log file to be able to submit a new question.  It is still ffmpeg specific as opposed to C# specific and I know the C# code is all ok. so just down to those command arguments really..:)

If you are on Windows (presumably since you are using C#) is there a reason that you can't simply use Windows Media Encoder and Windows Streaming Media Services on the server?  It sounds like it is designed to do exactly what you are trying to do.  I'm not sure I understand why you need to build your own solution when many great (and even free or no additional cost) solutions exist already.
Update:
Based on the understanding that you just need about 10fps jpeg's and that latency doesn't matter as much as guaranteeing delivery, I would probably do the following:
1) Client submits each image with an incrementing sequence number to the server.
2) The server takes each image and stores it in to the file system with the path and sequence number in a dictionary.
3) When the viewer connects it starts by asking for the current image and is given the image and sequence number.
4) Upon display of an image, the viewer then requests the next sequence number.  Timing information for how far behind the viewer is could also be sent back to keep it from getting too far behind.  The server would wait until an image is available for the sequence number if it doesn't yet have one.  This would help keep in sync as well.

Hi, thanks for replying. I did take a look at Windows media Encoder but it is working with streams.  I am using jpegs you see.

@AndrewSimpson - ah, so video (even at low framerate) isn't an option? Would you like to jump in chat to discuss a bit more about what you need.  I'm still not 100% sure I understand the scenario.

hi, I would love to. How do do that?

@AndrewSimpson - updated my comment with a link on the word Chat, just click it. :)

ffmpeg has an input demuxer that can read a stream of image files piped in back-to-back.  -f image2pipe.  Or just decode the jpegs, and feed the image data to WME.


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Is it possible to have an image be picture-in-picture and just tell FCPX to keep it at its original size?
By default, when I drop an image into the timeline, it fills the full width of the video. Which I don't want. Is it possible to say, "adjust yourself to your actual size"? And if so, how?

By "actual size" I suppose you want to conform your footage pixel to pixel instead of frame to frame. For this you will need to change Spatial Conform to None in the inspector.
The new default behavior in FCP is to scale your footage to either "fit" or "fill" the project's frame, the difference being only relevant when your footage doesn't have the same aspect as the project's. This conforming defines the actual 100% Scale in the Transform panel. So make sure the scale is also set to 100%.
You can find more information about Spatial Conform in it's documentation.

Welcome to Video Production on Stack Exchange.  Thanks for stepping up and answering this question.  If possible to add a few more details summarizing what Spatial Conform is, this would be an even more helpful answer.  I doubt the Apple link will go dead anytime soon, but it's nice to have a little detail in the answer so that the link is mostly just further reference.

Thanks for the warm welcome and the up vote AJ. I added some more explanation.


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How to Create Fire Light like Ligthing in After Effects
I am interested in creating a fire light kind of effect for a footage. We have a 2d animation composition, and want to add a fire lighting to the scene. Think of a wall when lighted with a campfire or a fireplace. That is what I am trying to accomplish.
Thinking about using particular kind of thing. But not sure if that's the correct way.
How can I? Open to every kind of suggestions.
Thanks!

You could add some randomization to applying a redish orange color to the scene, but really, without 3d depth information it isn't going to work all that well.  Lighting falls differently based on distance from the source and angle of incidence and you can't compute that information easily or accurately from a flat frame.


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Software recommendation for creating videos for demoing research results
I wish to create a video that demonstrates my research results, which comprise of images (graphs, tables, visualisations, etc), image sequences and videos. An example video which achieves what I am trying to do conceptually can be found here (MP4 file, ~15.9 MB).
Therefore, the requirements for my research videos include the ability to create:

Title pages
Images to be displayed over variable time (e.g. graphs / tables, single frames side-by-side, etc)
Text annotations (with options for adding bullet points / numbered lists, arrows, boxes, etc)
Video sequences that can be displayed side by side and it is critical that they are in sync
Image sequences to be played as video with a user-defined frame rate
Background audio (voice-overs)

Such resulting video should be of similar quality to the example given and allow good compression ratios.
OS: Mac OS X 10.9
System: 2.7GHz i7; 16GB RAM
Budget: $300 (when justifiable)
Complexity: Up to a full day of learning
Given this use case and constraints, what would be the best software tool for such a task?

Hire someone.  This is exactly what I do for a living.  (I'm not saying you should hire me.  I already have plenty of work on my plate) Engineers and research scientists tend to underestimate the amount of experience and knowledge required to produce quality video.

Even if all you have to spend is $300 for one project, you can find someone who already has access and experience with the necessary tools to produce your video.

You're forgetting something important: the time it will take to learn how to use sophisticated editing software. If this is a one-time task, the previous answerer is right -- hire someone. If you're going to do this regularly, plan on spending at least $300 for Final Cut Pro and a few weeks to learn the basics well.

Just about any NLE could handle your needs.  Nothing in that listing seems particular difficult, though with a budget of $300 it might be easiest and fastest to pay an editor to put it together for you really quick.  Alternately, Final Cut Pro X could do it pretty easily since you are on the Mac platform and the most recent copy is just within your budget.
It is a professional NLE (non-linear editor) but there are a ton of tutorials available online to get you going quickly with all the basics and your particular needs are very simple to do.