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What are some free (or cheap) options for hosting home videos that have copyright music in them?
I uploaded some of my home movies to YouTube for family members to watch but there were a few songs in there which YouTube said were copyrighted. The only music in there was the theme song from the old Mission Impossible but there's not arguing with Google. So they muted the whole video.  Fine, thems the rules.
Are there any other options for hosting a video like that for private viewing (even though I had the Youtube video set to "private")  and thus allow copyright music to be in the video?
(I assume that putting copyright music into a home movie, not for distribution beyond my immediate family falls under Fair Use and that the issue is that YouTube is under a lot of pressure to avoid copyright issues... but I'm hot trying to broadcast this to 100's of people. Maybe 10 or so. But just trying to avoid burning DVDs for them.

How are you going to guarantee that it is for home use/family use only? If it is on the Internet the usual understanding is that it is effectively public, so copyright holders will still be able to issue takedown notices - which is what worries hosting companies.

This question appears to be off-topic because it is not about audio/video production, but about ways to get around copyright rules.

I'm not sure the question is about circumventing the copyright rules.  If the rules are there to disallow public distribution of copyrighted material, then, as the title says, the OP is just looking for options to avoid stepping outside the rules... not circumvent them.  A fine distinction perhaps, but a real one I think.

This question isn't about getting around copyright rules: US copyright laws allow the public to use an author's works for non-commercial purposes or purposes that do not infringe on the author's rights to earn income from his or her works; it's called fair use. YouTube, Vimeo and pretty much all other online services ignore those laws because they are in danger of attack by media industries.

It might seem that way, and I agree that youtube is erring too much on the side of copyright holders. However you can always dispute the copyright claim and state it as fair use. Answer these 4 questions: 1. What are you doing with the copyrighted content? 2. What is the nature of the copyrighted content you are using? 3. How much of the original content are you using? 4. Will your work serve as a substitute for the original?

Yes, I could contest (challenge) Youtube's kneejerk reaction to my using some music in my home movies. However, it's a lot of work. I prefer to just avoid YouTube. This is not an effort to "steal" copyrighted material, just to broadcast my non commercial home movies.

On youtube, I would just contest the copyright holders.
For it to be fair use you need to be able to ask these 4 questions (not all 4 need to be good to be fair use):
1. What are you doing with the copyrighted content? If you are doing something highly transformative with the content then you will have more room under the fair use doctrine.  You are more likely to be covered if you are saying something quite different from what the original creator was trying to say.
2. What is the nature of the copyrighted content you are using? Use of creative or fictional content (for example, a film or cartoon) is less frequently allowed under fair use than less creative, non-fictional material.
3. How much of the original content are you using? You should be careful to use a reasonable amount.  Just use enough of the copyrighted content as you need to in order to get your point across.
4. Will your work serve as a substitute for the original? If your video will take away views or sales from the original then it is less likely to be covered under fair use.  Additionally, you shouldn’t create work that occupies markets that copyright owners are entitled to exploit.
The thing you need to realize is EVEN if you are fair use, the copyright holders can still sue you and the courts will then need to decide if your usage of the material constitute fair use. Home movies are protected by fair use. Feel free to contest them, but again depending on length and use, see court case of a 29 second home video, Lenz vs Universal
Now the other issue is that contentID system was abused by the rights holders and there recently has been pushback by youtube.
"YouTube also is noting that it had updated its ContentID tools to try to avoid some of the excessive takedowns associated with it. For one thing, it appears that "certain rightsholders" are being asked "to perform in-depth audits of their references before they can make any new claims." Reading between the lines, that sounds like YouTube is hitting back at rightsholders who have abused ContentID. That sounds good, though we'll have to see how it plays out in practice. YouTube is also making it easier to pull out incidental audio in videos that might trigger a ContentID claim, improving the way MCNs can "fast track" a response to claims they think are bogus, and is promising to more aggressively investigate ContentID abuse."
Source: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140326/08003126688/youtube-finally-admits-it-totally-screwed-up-rolling-out-contentid-to-multi-channel-networks-trying-to-improve-tools.shtml

You can use a file storage service like:

DropBox
Google Drive
Microsoft SkyDrive
Apple iCloud

You can restrict access of your files there to a handful of persons.
For example on Google Drive, when you share a file with some people, it asks you for their email addresses. It then sends an email to all those people with a "secret" link. In theory, this link is still public. But in practice, it is next to impossible to guess the value of those links.
Personally, I use Google Drive. It offers an initial 15 Gb of space.

That wouldn't allow streaming, right?

Some services like Dropbox (and I think Box, too) transcode uploaded videos and offer in-page streaming. Not quite YouTube, but also policed far less. ;-)

You could host the videos yourself.
I use a piece of software called Plex.  Basically, you set up a media server at home, which you can then share with people by sending them an invite.
In effect, you're giving people passworded access to your media server.  You can even choose which videos are shared with which people by creating categories, and then giving access to only certain categories.
The videos are never really public.

This is really the same question as any private distribution and is dependent on the hosting provider's TOS.
Personally, I use my own web server to host the files for download by friends and put a password on the download (or simply hide the link).  A simple web hosting package with enough space would allow for this.  They could even watch it as they download if you encode for "progressive download".
You could also use a service like DropBox and share the file to your friends.  It wouldn't allow streaming playback, but it would allow you to get the file to your family.
You could also try looking at other services to see if their TOS allow for private sharing that includes content such as that.  I don't know much about the TOS for streaming sites though since I self-host all my stuff.

Vimeo seems to be more supportive of Fair Use.
My video is private. It's a non-commercial home movie.


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How do I rig a Kino Flo to a gobo arm like this?
I want to know how to rig a 4-bank Kino to a gobo arm like this. I can tell they're using two arms, but I don't understand how it is attached to the first, nor do I know what mounting plate they have on the Kino.
film set with Kino on C-stand http://provideocoalition.com/images/uploads/fbm-makeoutpict.jpg
Most photos I've seen just have the Kino with its own lollipop, right into a knuckle.
Back of Kino Flo on C-Stand http://tanklightsyouup.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/two-kinos.jpg

I couldn't find anything official online, so it seems like it is clearly a custom job of some type.  It is also worth noting that there does appear to still be something positioned near the center attachment point as well.  The mount plate itself doesn't seem that complex, so they may have just machined something themselves.  A piece of sheet metal could probably be used with some bolts and such put through it.

The photo shows two grip heads, two arms and a c-stand. The kino would have its normal mounting plate (the one in the second photo).
The two grip arms are interlaced together; this makes them trombone-able (adjustable in length), stronger, and gives the gag a longer reach. One grip head attaches the arms to the c-stand, another attaches the kino to the arms.
I use this rig all the time; it works better if the stand is a junior stand and the grip arms are attached to the junior stand with a junior lolly-pop (much stronger).
Cardellini clamps can indeed clamp a stud to many things, but they aren't the best tool for this rig: you want a 5/8" female receiver for the Kino, not a 5/8" stud.

Welcome to Video Production.SE Don.  Great answer.  Super minor thing, we generally don't use signatures on the answers (so we can avoid clutter), but there is a profile section on your user page that is great for that kind of thing and having more info about you.

Get two or three Cardellini clamps (e.g: http://www.amazon.com/End-Jaw-2E-Cardellini-Clamp/dp/B0055V49F6.) Mini Cardellinis might be the right weight for Kinos.
You'll be able to attach anything to anything else!

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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FFmpeg MP4 to FLV too slow
I am converting .mp4 files to .flv using ffmpeg in centos. But the conversion time is extremely too slow! It takes about 1.5 hours to convert 500MB .mp4 file into .flv. I am using a linux vps with 2 GBs dedicated RAM.
I am using the following code:
ffmpeg -i source.mp4 -c:v libx264 -ar 22050 -crf 28 destination.flv

Is there any way I can fasten the conversion time? Any help/suggestions will be appreciated.

Given your are using a VPS this is no suprise (guessing you only have a single core with 1-3GHz) and you won't be able to crunch the conversion down to a few minutes. You can try using -c:v libx264 -presets ultrafast but I'd guess it will still take you about 45-60 minutes to encode.
Also remove the -crf option when using a preset (they choose a default that produces a very good balance between speed and quality, I only recommend to modify that value when you know what it really does)
Be advised that the quality you get from that preset is not exactly great. If you NEED fast encoding speed over everything then go for it, if it's not THAT important I'd suggest using fast oder faster instead of the ultrafast preset.

Hi, this solved the time issue. But, the .flv file being generated after conversion is about twice the size of the original .mp4 file in "ultrafast" mode, and thrice the size of the original .mp4 in "fast" mode. :(

Thats one of the trade offs you get for the fast conversion, you can't have small good looking files and a good compression.
In ultrafast it also uses a smaller bitrate afaik, which would explain the smaller size.
-crf 28 what you used before is a rather aggressive compression. Normally you use something around 20-22 when encoding with constant quality.

Why do you recommend removing -crf when using a -preset? If removed, then the default of -crf 23 will be used.

Because the presets work very well with the settings they provide in that case crf 23. There is barely a reason to modify that value. Compression will increase with a higher preset even though the crf value is the same for all presets. I'm assuming amateur knowledge here, if you want do more you will not have to ask basic questions as you will very quickly discover how these (basic) settings actually work and will make your own fine tuned settings tailored to your content.

edited the question to refelect that

An MP4 file normally contains H.264 video and AAC audio, both of which are compatible with the FLV container. You could simply copy over the streams:
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c copy output.flv

Since you're copying the streams, this will be as close to instantaneous as you're going to get and will not result in any loss of quality.

RAM is not the critical part of a transcode, CPU is.  Since it is working stream to stream, fairly minimal memory actually has to be required if the encoder is operating efficiently.  The memory speed does matter for scratch space for the processor, but not so much the quantity.
The CPU (or GPU if using GPU optimized encoding) is what does all the work and most likely your VPS has insufficient processing power.  Video encoding is extremely intensive.  It is one of the primary reasons that video editing workstations tend to be large powerful computers, often with multiple graphics cards to spread the load to GPU processing or dedicated hardware encoding peripherals.
Depending on the length of video represented by that 500mb file, this isn't at all surprising.   Even on my 2.9ghz quad core i7, it still takes roughly 2 to 3 times the length of the original video to complete a high quality 2 pass VBR encoding (and all 8 virtual cores are at 99% non-stop the entire time).  You may not be doing two pass, but you also likely don't have nearly as much processing power being thrown at it.

Hello @AJ Henderson, thank you for the detailed information. I really appreciate it.

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


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Video Encoding - Wasting Space
I am facing a common issue that I cannot find a term to describe: I have a few low quality VHS rips that were encoded with a certain Apple ProRes codec (irrelevant in the context of this particular question) and take up several GB of space. I know for sure that the video content is of such low quality that it shouldn't take up more space than say, an XDCAM EX 1080 HD file of longer length and higher visual quality.
Similarly, how is it possible that one video file can become ten times larger without any gains in fidelity when encoded with a lossless codec or with a higher bitrate? I would guess that somehow the encoder is adding "extra" information as it re-encodes... but obviously it is impossible for a low fidelity file to gain quality when it is merely re-encoded with higher quality settings... so what is going on here?
Is there a word to describe this phenomenon? Also, how can I make sure my transcoding doesn't INCREASE the file size? I've been looking for tools that can measure the appropriate bitrate for files (like the low-fi VHS rips that somehow can take up to 10GB... which shoudln't happen) but I can't find any tools like this... What I want to do in this situation is to re-encode these massive files to an appropriate format with a reasonable file size without losing any visible quality...

This isn't a phenomenon, this is compression.  It is simply how it works.
Compression works by taking an input, runs it through some algorithms and then gets an output that matches up either exactly (lossless) or approximately (lossy) with the original input.  It is not stored like normal video data as a set of pixels, but rather some form of data that models the original set of pixels using less space.
When you decode a video, it works from the compressed format and generates out a stream of pixel values that can be played back as actual video.  When you transcode from one format to another, the video first goes through this decoding process to get a set of pixel color values and then goes through the encoding for the new format.
What you seem to be missing is that it does not matter how high quality the actual signal is that goes into the encoding, it will work off whatever you give it.  You could save a low quality, artifact riddled, grainy, nasty, noisy video as a lossless format and you would end up with a perfectly preserved low quality, artifact riddled, grainy, nasty, noisy video.  There would be no further degradation in quality, but you still have crappy video and it takes a huge amount of space because it is not storing an approximation of the crappy video, but rather the exact data.
If instead you were to use a lossy compression that was "similar" to the quality level of the video, you would introduce even more bad artifacts and lose any semblance of actual signal that was left in the video.
This principal is also referred to as generations of loss.  It is mostly a carry over from the analog days when no copy was lossless and thus the numbers of generations of copies had to be kept to a minimum to preserve quality.  With the digital era, this problem was greatly alleviated since a digital file can be copied perfectly, however it still lives on in transcoding where there is generations of loss.
This point actually also explains why the SD video files are so much larger than you expect.  Most consumers are use to end-user compression formats with relatively small file sizes.  These file sizes are great for end users because they don't need to be edited with or re-encoded, however such formats rapidly fall apart when you try to encode them again because of their small file size and large amount of loss (even if it isn't readily obvious to a normal viewer.)
Production quality DV video used a gigabyte or more of storage every 4.7 minutes or so, so it isn't at all unexpected that your high quality SD capture (even if the source itself was crap) is "large" by consumer standards.  If you don't need to edit the videos, it is perfectly fine to transcode them as finished videos to a low bit-rate consumption file size.  I'd recommend using 2 pass VBR encoding for this purpose, h.264 should do fine and you could use a low bitrate.
Bit rates are ultimately what determine file size in compression.  The bit rate defines the amount of data that is allowed to be used to encode the video and roughly put, the compression algorithm will approximate the footage as best it can with the given bit-rate.  The lower the bitrate, the smaller the file, but the lower the quality and the less able you will be to re-encode the video in the future without catastrophic quality loss.
As far as what levels you can use without noticeable quality loss for a final output, that really depends on the content and is far too broad for a Q/A site without a sample of video to look at.  Compression is an incredibly complex field with lots of options and there are people who do nothing but handle doing compression for their entire living.  The colors, the amount of motion, the amount of noise, etc, all have an impact on how much data is actually required to store the video in a way that the end user won't notice artifacts.

Generations of loss was the term that I was looking for. Sometimes I forget that compression is as complex as it seems, so I guess I'll just have to play with settings until I find some settings that will work for archiving the VHS rips. Thanks!
This one was a tough tie— The other answer was really great on giving some easy to understand information on how video compression works.

To understand this you need to understand how codecs actually work.
A plain uncompressed video frame e.g. a single picture is pretty large. I'm talking about a bitmap, not a lossless encoded video, no encoding at all, just plain pixel information.
Here simple example of a Full HD frame for some perspective:
We have a resolution of 1920x1080 that equals to 2073600 pixels. Now each pixels has three color values. That is usually an 8bit value per color (though it could also be 10/12/16 or 32bit). So we have 2073600*3*8 which equals to 49766400 bits. To get bytes we have to divide by 8 and we get 6220800 Byte or 5.93MB.
So that's nearly 6MB per frame, for a 30FPS video that's 178MB per second!
A 10 minute video would be an insane 104GB.
Now luckily some really smart people developed all kinds of algorithms to define a frame in a smarter/shorter way while still containing the full information of the original bitmap. That's what we would call a lossless codec, just a different way to save the same information.
So when you record your VHS you capture device is getting every frame as a bitmap that it will encode the way you tell it to. So even while VHS uses analog compression and has a overall bad quality you still end up with the same chunk of information as with a Blu-ray encoded to the same resolution and bit-depth that your capture device is recording your VHS. "Good quality" is only determined by your perception of the picture.
Just keep in mind that when you decode a video file or capture something to play it back in your video player or to encode it with another codec (transcode) you always have this huge raw bitmap as the intermediate step, the "raw" information that you can use to describe it in a new way or simply display it on your monitor.
Now there is a limit to how well you can describe an image in a shorter/smaller way without discarding some information.
Those are the so called lossy codecs like h264. These are even smarter and complex algorithm where a frame isn't just a frame anymore, the encoder looks at several frames and trys to estimate how frames in between of so called "keyframes" will look like based of the information in those keyframes.
They also divide the image into several blocks of information and try to "guess" how they should look. Because we know how we guess information we just need a "clue" so when we decode our frame we can guess pretty accurately how this chunk of information would have looked like but its not a 100% accurate representation of the source information.
Thats why it can be so much smaller than our accurate representation with a lossless codec.
It's also the reason why we had this blocking in heavily compressed MPEG2 encoded videos back in the earlier days of the internet, h.264 handles that in a lot smarter way, hence we don't really have this type of artifacts anymore but we get these weird distortion sometimes when the image smears in this "blocky way", that happens when there is a decoding error and we missed a keyframe to decode the frames between the next keyframe.
To answer your last bit. MP4 with h264 encoded video is generally good idea. Use a tool like Handbrake, it makes the task very easy and you still have a lot of control of the outcome. Either choose a preset or set the "RF" setting to 18 to get a visually lossless video. Meaning you wont see a visual quality difference.

It takes a lot of bits to accurately, or nearly-accurately reproduce the input pixels, regardless of what they contain.  The only exception is low-complexity stuff like a screen capture or animation, where big areas are EXACTLY the same colour, and/or at bit-for-bit identical from frame to frame.
The difference between your intuition and real life comes from the fact that it's complexity as measured by a computer, not human-perceived visual complexity / quality, that codecs operate on.
Compressing the noise is where all the bits are going.  A round trip through a lossy codec will actually decrease the compressibility of animation, because the blurring and especially blocking artifacts are then input that you're asking the next codec to reproduce.
If there was a way to pick out just the image you want to see from the VHS noise and MPEG blocking artifacts on a typical capture, i.e. find just the complexity you want to keep, and throw away everything else, it would be the Holy Grail of computer video.  It would be by definition the perfect denoise filter, as well as something you could build a ridiculously efficient codec around.
All we have now are rough approximations that try to guess what's important to keep based on DCT coefficients or wavelets, and similar measures.  (e.g. high energy in higher coefficients means there are probably some edges here, so it would be worse than usual to distort this 16x16 pixel block of the picture).


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Video for Windows Codec x264 and VP80
I'm looking for VfW codec to encode H264 and VP80.

I already found: x264vfw
And VP80vfw

The 1st is bugged and lost the start and the end. The 2nd do not install on Windows 8.
Why VfW ? to use then in a C# sofware using EmguCV, recording frame by frame. I can't use ffmpeg.
Any Idea ?

There isn't really an alternative to x264vfw. Are you sure the error is with the codec and not your application? It's in wide use, such a major bug would definitely be found.
Also be aware that h264 doesn't work in a frame by frame basis unless you encode only intra frames.
VP80 is NOT h264, just a similar codec.
If you need to develop an app you probably want to turn to a commercial h264 implementation like MainConcepts Codec SDK: http://www.mainconcept.com/products/sdks/codec-sdk/video/h264avc.html
Should also come with a vfw codec.
Alternatively you can turn to GStreamer which offers C# bindings: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/gstreamer/gstreamer-sharp
Another option could may be ffdshow it adds quite a few codecs to VfW and I believe also x264.

Thanks, I have byte[]bgr image that I need to store quickly and compressed so I choose EmguCV that I already use elsewhere. As you say many codec are no free so complicated for a side project. I record 10s video and it lost 1-2s to start but it could be EmguCV indeed

GStreamer is great for developing OpenSource or even commercial apps with video functionality but its not that super duber easy to use, though if you are willing to give it a try it definitely offers great features, is pretty robust and in the end not THAT hard to use.
You could also use native C++ code in your C# app to use the latest version of GStreamer.
E: Actually it seems the continued development, the latest C# bindings are from 2014! Last time I checked the latest code was from 2009.

Indeed 2009 is 5 years ago ^^ I'll give a try to EmguCV I already use and test an other vfw FOURCC codec. Then I'll try to pay if I can


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After Effects - Simple Lighting Effects
I'm currently putting together a simple lyric video like in the link below, but am missing this one piece I can't seem to fix together.
On the left side you'll notice the ball of light moving up and down, adding a nice dynamic effect. How would I go about doing the same? Any help is appreciated. Thanks!
VIDEO LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9DKftwgGAI

This is a simple animated lens flare. The specific lens flare they use is likely from a package of lens flares you pay for (a plugin) made by Andrew Kramer over at videocopilot, specifically: https://www.videocopilot.net/products/opticalflares/
To create custom light flares without the need to pay for them, I'd recommend watching this video:

You simply create the object, the flare in this case, and animate its' position. Do you know how to do that?


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Will I lose quality when converting avi to mkv?
I have a lot of *.avi files with either 1 audio track or several. All of them are mp3 encoded. The video codec is xvid4.
However, when I play these avi files I can choose between the audio tracks (if there is more than 1 audio track) but they are named "audio track 1", "audio track 2" and so on.
That's why I want to convert them into mkv files since they support audio track names.
Would I loose any quality if I convert them?

AVI and MKV are both containers, so in theory it should be possible to transfer your contents with no further loss. I can't say for certain if MKV can wrap xvid4, but it's very likely. You shouldn't need to decode / re-encode to transfer the contents, just demux / remux.

I used mkvmerge for the muxing. Thanks. seems like the audio and video quality are still the same.

As Jim Mack has correctly pointed out MKV (Matroska) and AVI are containers, and are both able to store many of the same streams without any change to the streams themselves, and thus the remuxing should be lossless.
But there is one time where data is lost when remuxing from AVI to MKV. The thing is that some poor encoders in the day of AVI have created technically playable AVI files which had some garbage data in one of the streams for part of the time. They used that rather than setting up timestamp offset.
Most AVI-to-MKV remuxers (like mkvtools) will take such garbage data and assume that it can be converted into the offset, when such garbage happens in the beginning. However, in some rare cases this may not work, for example when the bitrate of the stream with garbage in it is variable. This causes timestamps to be badly shifted.
If the garbage occurs only in the beginning, the problem is easily resolved by editing the header of Matroska file, and changing the offset manually until the streams match. However, if the garbage occurs several times, then remuxer will just dump the garbage and the timestamps cannot be fixed that easily any longer.
Now, this doesn't happen for most files, but some "old school" Whatever-to-AVI may produce such thing. And it is important to know, since even losing "garbage" is by definition lossy when it translates to metadata change.


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What is good software for video editing under Linux?
I plan to create some homemade video lectures and I am under Linux. Is there comfortable open-source tool that has the following abilities:

to clear noise
to have a few sound channels
to allow adding a slide screen in part of the video screen
to add titles and labels over the footage
to have simple effects

Thanks in advance.

Possible duplicate: http://video.stackexchange.com/questions/2274/good-open-source-video-editors
Though its not asking specifically for Linux and mainly for windows.

Nope, I don't think those are for Linux... Open-source means ~free.

He also searches for Linux tools and many are for Linux.

There are a lot of answers regarding open source on this answer: Good open source Video Editors?
If you specifically target Linux I'd suggest Lightworks or Kdenlive. Lightworks isn't open source yet but is announced to be after the mac release is finished.
Both a great option for video editing under Linux and fullfill your requirements. Lightworks has only one downside, that being you need to register it on the first start with a free Lightworks account. After that you don't have to connect to the internet again.
If OpenSource is the most important factor I suggest to go with Kdenlive.

Its actually a suprisingly solid tool despite the kind of boring website for it. NLE's for Linux have been pretty crap in the past. Would recommend it over a lot of free tools for windows.

Blender has video editing options, and of course, it is free. Check it out.

It seems to be a 3D modeller software, but thanks a lot for sharing. :)

It is not only that. It is a video editing tool check this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sODml0PBlo

I later realized your point. But I still don't have the right to vote up your answer :-/

Don't mind about voting, just download the app and try it, it is an impressive tool. Hope the info will be usefull for someone else. Enjoy :-)


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Lossless conversion of yuv420p10le to yuv420p
I have an mp4 movie, containing an h264 video stream (pixel format yuv420p10le), and an AAC audio stream.
My favorite player cannot read the yuv420p10le pixel format. I was wondering if it is possible to convert losslessly the pixel format of the movie from yuv420p10le to yuv420p. More specifically, is it possible (theoretically speaking), and if so, can any program do it and how?
I've tried the following with ffmpeg, but it does not work:
ffmpeg -i super_movie.mp4 -vcodec copy -acodec copy -pix_fmt yuv420p super_movie_yuv420p.mp4

Thanks in advance for any help.

No this is not possible. Looking at this theoretically disregarding the codec you can not take away information and call it lossless, thats already a terminology problem.
Applying a new color space without transcoding is also not possible
It's not so easy to say whether this is even possible with certain codecs other than h264, it really depends on how you define certain terminology.
Regarding h264 its simply not possible in the way the codec works, color information is essential in how the codec encodes frames as its based on motion estimation and the color information between frames is what defines the in between frames that don't hold the information of a whole frame but only the differences between keyframes.
So just applying different color values to each existing pixel is not really possible. It would result in major artifacts.

If you don't have a high-bit-depth video card and monitor, you then you can just make a temporary lossless file for viewing that will put the same pixels on your monitor:
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -codec copy -pix_fmt yuv420p -c:v libx264 -qp 0 -preset ultrafast -movflags +faststart output.mp4

or -c:v utvideo might be faster to encode.
Or if you have a fast enough storage setup, -c:v yuv4 (raw yuv420 planar).  You may need to put that in an mkv container, if ffmpeg can't mux that into an mp4.


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iMovie 11 starts with a black screen. How can we make this a white screen?
I want to make a movie that is a continuous loop. All images have white background.  When I make the movie with iMovie it starts and ends with a black background image.  This does not look good when the video loops.
How do we control the basic background in iMovie?

If there is an image with a white background at the start and end of the video, I don't see how it could export a black frame. (It's never done that for me! Or maybe I didn't notice it...?) What are you using to loop the video?

That is probably the answer.  Let me try it and if yes then how about you copy your comment to the answer section.....

Very cool! I wish I'd posted that as an answer instead of a comment, so you could mark it as The Answer (and I could get some points).

@BrettFromLA you can always post it as an answer now. I would up vote it! In fact, it's pretty common to create an answer from a comment.

If there is an image with a white background at the start and end of the video, it should never export a black frame at either end.  (I've never seen it do that, and I've used iMovie '09 to edit hundreds of videos!)

So, the answer to this question is, "You imagined that there's a problem.  There is no problem."  I don't get it.


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What software is required to make a simple animation clip like this?
I'm looking to create a very simple animation video, maybe 1-2 minutes long, with a 3D logo and text just kind of floating around and some lighting effects. I want to make something similar to this:

What software is required to make this? Can something like Blender make this whole thing, or would I need a combo of tools like Maya and Sony Vegas?
Thanks!

I'd do it with Blender. Free 3D, video editing, compositing, etc... software.
Learning to use blender could be a daunting task, but it is absolutely worth your time. A rough explanation the way I can think of doing what you intend to do is get your logo as a background image for reference, create a plane, add vertex as needed and duplicate your reference logo. Then extrude that plane to create a 3D logo.
Blender has an option to create 3D text so you don't need to worry about that. Setup lights, materials, plan your camera trip, set the length of your video and render the whole thing. You might want to use the compositing tool within Blender to enhance your movie with glares.
Here is a link with a video I've created

 it's not good (It is a hobby for me, I don't work on this area) but you can see the potential with the text created for the beginning "El Hada Mapy" and chroma (masking is poor I was in a hurry so please don't be too picky).
By the way, I didn't see your last question. Yes, you can do the whole thing with Blender, you don't need any other software since it brings all you need to do it. You have some examples of how to do it and what you get in the next links:

Thanks YoMismo - I have inserted your comments into your post (the EDIT function lets you do that too)

This was most likely done in After Effects.  Simple 3D extrusions like this can be done by making a shape layer in After Effects and doing a 3D extrusion.  It then looks like they added a lens flare to it and then started positioning that layer in 3D while positioning the camera and other text layers around it.

This is probably it. However, for any more advanced 3D you might want to look into Cinema 4D. It's more or less the standard in the motion graphics industry.

After Effects is used extensively in the motion graphics industry as well.  Cinema 4D makes sense if it is something more elaborate, but would be overkill for rendering out an asset this basic.  After Effects is still one of the most popular compositing systems out there.  The two even integrate together to an extent.

Oh, without doubt. I meant that it's the standard for 3D. But from what I understand of C4D there is seldom a workflow where AE isn't involved as well at some point.

SHORT ANSWER: PHOTOSHOP & KEYNOTE.
Like anything else, there are many ways to achieve an animation similar to this, however the fact that you are asking how to do or what software to use indicates to me that your experience/skill level in motion graphics, animation or even video editing w/ photoshop is still being developed; in other words, you're a beginner. (I do not say that as a put down at all, just as qualifier.)
Unless you are pursing a career in animation or motion gfx the Pro Apps you and others mentioned should not be considered. Any of the Pro Apps (AE, Maya, Cinema, even Motion) have learning curves of hundreds of hours.
However there are plenty of shortcuts to achieve something very similar, one of which being Photoshop and Keynote. Photoshop and Keynote will process will take you +/- 1 to 3 hours and will allow you to output an HD Quicktime file.
The next level up in terms of complexity, control and learning curve would be to use Photoshop and Final Cut Pro (or any NLE that allowed you to keyframe).
Following that would be to purchase a template that you could use in Motion (or AE but I wouldn't recommend AE even for a template unless you really intend on committing yourself to a time investment).
Following that would be to actually make the whole thing in Motion.
All of my options can be achieved by a typical computer techy kinda guy who's creative and doesn't mind following some tutorials and applying themselves.
Good luck.

Saying it would take 100+ hours to learn to do this in AE is completely deceptive.  Learning AE well may take hundreds of hours, but doing simple things does not.  This could probably be done, even by a new user, in under the 3 hours you mention as the long end for Photoshop and Keynote, especially at the quality level that Photoshop and Keynote will allow.  Sure you won't fully learn AE in that time, but you don't need to, a basic extrusion and keyframe animation is pretty trivial (about 10 to 15 mouse clicks in total).

How would you make the 3d extruded layer in Photoshop?  This is no simpler than doing it in After Effects (really more complicated) and if you do it in AE, it's a whole 3 to 5 mouse clicks to animate it instead of having to try to hack Powerpoint or Keynote in to doing it.  That said, this suggestion does provide a cheaper way to accomplish the goal if they already have that software and don't yet have After Effects or Motion, but I would not call that approach easier.


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Sony Handycam HDR-CX210 Creates JPGs Frequently While Shooting Video
I have a Sony Handycam HDR-CX210, and I shot 10 minutes of footage continuously tonight. When I imported it into my PC, the Handycam's memory also included 80-ish JPG images that were stills from the video.  Is that a feature I turned on accidentally?  Or is that standard (to create periodic thumbnails or something)?  I don't need those stills, and they take up memory (1.5 MB each x 80 = 120 MB).

The only function which does this is called Smile Shutter. Please have a look at the official manual at page 110.
You can disable it under:
Menu > Camera/Mic > Face > Smile Shutter


text:
What is good software for camera recording under Linux?
I use Linux(Mint Linux Petra) and will probably switch to Ubuntu 14 soon.
I need to record video with my camera on my laptop(imagine I use a web-camera for simplification) and I need to see real-time what I am shooting and record the stream.
I tried camera-app and cheese but both fail on my distribution.
Also, I plan to use external camera for better quality, any suggestions on interfaces, etc.? I prefer to see the stream directly on my laptop screen.
(If you want to know why - it will save me some time while editing.)

Do you need audio or not?

What do you mean both fail on my distribution ? Cheese does exactly what you require (displays the stream during recording).

I was going to recommend Kino which is the one I used when I needed to do that, but according to their web page the project is no longer mantained, so you can either use it the way it is or try the other software that is recommended on their web page:
Shotcut, Kdenlive, Flowblade, OpenShot, PiTiVi, LiVES, and LightWorks.

OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) is multi-platform (OBS is widely used in video game streaming). I haven't tried it yet myself for multiple cameras, but I know it supports at least one (as many streamers put a small video of themselves playing the game on their streams) and it does real-time preview.
Edit: I did run two c920 webcams with it on Linux (Ubuntu 16.04) and it works fine.

I would recommend Shotcut. It has become my goto editor for video in Linux.

I don't know what is wrong with my answer. For those that don't know how to record from camera input in Shotcut, here is how you do it. Go to File =>  Open Other ... => select your input for webcam you would use Video4Linux and start recording .

I am using Zoom.  Login as the only user, and select record.  The sound and picture are good, ir waves in mp4, and green screen is built in if you want it.

This should not be downvoted: it is a legitimate option, and has the advantage that many people already have it installed, unlike these specialty tools. If you just need one quick-and-dirty recording and don't want to install software you'll forget about later, open your personal room and do a cloud or local recording.

Try QtCAM - An Open Source Webcam application for devices supported by UVC driver or any V4L2 compatible device. You can see the preview directly on your laptop. Their updated version has support for all USB cameras and you could download the source code from GitHub.

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


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What is wrong with my "new" camera? My playback looks bad
My old Canon mv690 camera recorder got broken. It uses MiniDV casettes. To play many old recordings I bought a used Canon GL2 Mini DV 3ccd camera to play my old casettes, but the image is not displaying correctly. Does anyone know what the problem can be?
This is what my videos looks like on the GL2 Camera:

Looks like a video decoding problem. I mean, looks like the problem is NOT physical, but digital. Digital tape may be the same, but the digital format may not. Check with the specs of both cameras what format are they recording and playing and if you can set the play to different formats/codecs/whatever.

I would try cleaning the playheads (there are special tapes you can put in for cleaning) and/or checking the playback speed.  Those are the two most common causes of that issue on my GL2.

when I do test recording with the GL2, the playback works fine,so i think i dont have too clean the playheads. How can I change the playspeed?

I believe it is in the playback or vcr menu but I'd have to double check. It'll be lp and ep as modes I believe. I'll try to dig out my GL2 and check tonight.

Seems like my old camera was recording in another format PAL, and I can not make it to work with the GL

@VidarVestnes - ah, that would also do it.  Yeah, you need a PAL compatible playback deck and unfortunately the GL2 won't change modes.  You might be able to get around it by using a firewire connection and trying to playback to the computer and decode it as PAL, but I'm not sure if that will work or not.


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Premiere Pro PC timeline only plays for a few frames and then no Audio after installing Miraizon DNxHD / ProRes Codec
Since installing Miraizon DNxHD / ProRes Codec I am not able to play my timeline in real-time. It gives me a few frames and then the video freezes and audio keeps playing. I changed from Performance mode to Memory mode and now it will play through, however if I stop and start a couple times. It reverts to the former behavior. Specs of my system and project below.
I have Premiere Pro CC 2014 on a Windows 8 PC i7-4930 16GB RAM. Drive structure: Win/Programs on 256GB SSD, Project/Media on 1TB SSD, Preview/DB on 5TB RAID 0 7200 Seagates.
I'm working on a shortform project, basically 5 sequences comprising 18mins of a 22min show. Two streams of prores from from a 5D,6D 2 cam shoot, and I'm putting slides, stockfootage, and titles in.
I was able to play my timelines in real-time just fine (preview format DNx 115 1080p 23.976) until installing Miraizon DNxHD / ProRes codec. I got it because the editor putting the final show/QC together is on FCP7.. anyhow after installation I notice my preview files were gone -not surprising-. If I delete my preview files I get a couple clean playbacks (after they regenerate) and then the original behavior, same if I restart PPro.
I tried running the QT installer and "repairing" that after someone suggested that the QT SDK might be the issue. No difference. Makes more sense to re-install DNxHD codec from avid probably- I'll do that next.
Has anyone had a similar issue or Can you suggest what might be going on?

According to Miraizon support this is a peculiarity in Premiere Pro handling of ProRes that causes it to interact "very inefficiently" with the the codec. There is an update forthcoming but until then they suggested this as a work-around:
Move the AppleProResDecoder.qtx from the /Quicktime/QTSystem/ folder to a temp folder.
I still get some inconsistencies with various files under these circumstances such as "Media Pending" messages that aren't resolved and spotty playback.
This is currently working for me:
For editing:
Leave the AppleProResDecoder.qtx in /Quicktime/QTSystem/ and move the MProResCodec.qtx from the /Quicktime/QTComponents/ folder to a temp folder. Restart PPro.
When I'm ready to export my ProRes:
Then when I'm ready to export to ProRes, I move the MProResCodec.qtx back to the /Quicktime/QTComponents/ folder and move the AppleProResDecoder.qtx into the temp folder.
Restart PPro.

Ah, ok, I wonder if it is related to the Quicktime embedding issues.  There are some pretty severe issues on some systems with the old 32 bit quicktime engine that Premiere has to use for processing mov files.  Sounds like this is probably hitting on that.  Glad they had a work around to help it behave and thanks for sharing what you found.

In one project I get repeated Adobe QuickTime Server errors since installing Miraizon. But I can't centralize it, the project has a lot of linked PSDs and AEPs. But this "workaround" also helps with that. I still get the error when opening the project, but I can still export via AME -sometimes I have to break it into small sections and copy into a new sequence to avoid the error.. I assume some sort of memory problem.

They released an update this past fall (2014). The "memory issue" is better, but still seems to grind down after a (much longer) time of editing. Usable most of the time, but I don't experience if I follow the fix above.


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Large avi not playing to the end
I have recorded a 20 minutes game session from Minecraft using Kazam and saved the result as a 80 gig avi. When I try to open the file though only the first 8-9 minutes are played.
Selecting it as a source in Handbrake shows the correct length at 19 min 49 sec but converting it to mkv for instance only results in a file that is 8 min 33 sec.
Adding the file as a source in OpenShot it is playable up until 8 min mark but after that gets dark.
Adding it in a track in the project and playing it produces a video with only the gui and the rest black.
Are there anyway to save this file or should I just be happy that I at least got 9 minutes?

It is hard to say without seeing the file itself, but my best guess is that an issue occurred causing the data stream to die but the meta data was still set "properly".  Generally, the actual video data itself is not looked at for the length of the video.  Instead, there is header meta data in the file that holds the video stream which indicates how long the video is and how it is encoded.  It is possible that the video stream either had an error at around 9 minutes or perhaps it simply stopped recording around that time, however the timer kept going and the meta data for the length wasn't written until the end.
This would also explain why it goes dark, because the video stream player would try to play it, but the content isn't there, so it has nothing to play.
If the file just has a corruption for a short while and then works again, you might be able to get around it by splitting the video stream in to multiple parts, but my guess is that the data was probably not encoded in the first place and your stream itself is probably truncated.

I tried checking the file for error using avconv and it failed to even operate on it so I believe you are correct. I thruw it out.


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How to Differentiate Subtitle Track Language Between Simplified and Traditional Chinese?
I'm using MP4Box (command line tool) to add subtitles to mp4 movies. The language of the subtitle seems to be set using ISO 639 codes. There's no differentiation between Simplified and Traditional Chinese in ISO 639 (as the difference is not in the language, but in the script).
My question is: Does the MP4 format allows making this differentiation, and if so, how?
Thanks in advance for your answers.

You should be able to define you own 3 character long language code for imported media using the option :lang=LAN when specifying your media file for import. LAN being your own language code. So you could use something like SCN and TCN.

Interesting answer. I didn't know the language code could be non-standard. However, SCN is the language code for Sicilian (I could choose smthg else though). TCN is currently not linked to any language, but may be in the future. Isn't there a cleaner solution? Thanks anyway.

Well there isn't really anything else you can do without violating the specs I guess.


text:
HQ screen video capture
I'm trying to create a video out of what's shown on the computer's screen. Unfortunately, I can't seem to get it in high quality, and since there are small fonts on the screen - the HQ is important.
I'm using Microsoft Expression Encoder 4. When I view the captured video before encoding (xesc) - it's fine. But after encoding - the encoded file (wmv) is not.
I've tried setting the size to "source" (doesn't help), simply renaming the file to ".wmv" (the text is clear but most of the screen is "grayed out"), and some other ideas. Nothing works.
I'm open to using different screen video capture software. (Preferably free.) I've researched about video editing software such as Adobe Premiere Pro, but it seems not to include video screen capture.

In order to get a near the high quality you require, you would have to use quite a high bit rate.  Unfortunately the number of pixels that the video decodes to and the actual effective resolution of a video are not the same thing.
Modern video compression will make the most effective use of the data rate you set the video to use, but the more you compress, the less fine detail can be stored, especially if it doesn't have much of a pattern to it or changes a lot from frame to frame.
The first thing to try would be to increase the data rate of the video as far as you can and see if that improves it.  If not, then you could try another capture program.  I personally like FRAPS a lot, it isn't free, but it also isn't particularly expensive ($37).  It works really great assuming you have sufficiently fast drives to keep up with the recording, though the initial videos are massive.

I would go with either jing ( http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html ) free or Camtasia ( http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.html ) both from Techsmith.
Camtasia allow you to zoom in on part of the screen after recording but before rendering. This basically solves your problem and is great when you need to create video to a resolution that is less than the recorded resolution.

CamStudio is a well-known free screen capture software. I used it, but didn't like it. Movavi suite has screen capture and video editing features, but it's not free.
To get best results, you should use quality screen capture codec, not resize your source videos, use good video converter or editing software. Adobe Premiere Pro is a professional video editor (the best choice to edit videos - if you can afford it)


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Do I need to encode video in both ogg and webm?
I'm doing some HTML5 video work; I'm taking uploaded video and using ffmpeg and related packages to convert the original videos (usually .mov, but whatever) into mp4, ogg and webm versions for presentation via video.js.  The ogg and webm encodings are both working nicely in Firefox across Windows, Mac, and Linux (the main reason for producing both, it seems); my question is whether, as a practical matter, I need to produce both ogg and webm versions.  Both seem to be working well; I'm asking out of an interest in not producing stuff that I don't really need.  Any thoughts?  Thanks!

Probably better suited for Stackoverflow but I think its still a valid question for this SE.
Producing theora(ogg) versions of your videos is actually redundant. Any browser version supporting ogg is also supporting webm.
For questions like these I recommend using caniuse.com.
If you compare webm with ogg you quickly see that you cover the same browser versions and more with webm.
Unless you need to cover Firefox 3.5+.

Thanks much -- I'm new to the ogg/webm stuff, but that's pretty much what I thought was going on.


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What is the cheapest camera I can plug external microphone to?
I am working on some homemade lectures so I need good quality of sound, but unfortunately I do not have any budget so far(amateur stuff).
I am looking for a camera that can shoot in Full HD and can have an external microphone attached. I do not need anything further than that, though.
I was considering SONY HDR-CX240 until I found out it cannot have external mic.
(What if it is a USB mic? It does have a USB slot.) So, should I quit this choice and buy a more expensive camera? Which one whould you recommend?
Is it possible that I record with the camera and external mic attached to my laptop at the same time?

Do you own a high-end smartphone? You can plug-in pretty much any microphone and have very decent audio quality. Some Android phones even support usb mics.
So you probably need a cheap adapter for standard stereo or mono mics to work with the 3 channel type headphone+mic jacks in modern phones. Something like this: https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-headsets-separate-headphone-microphone/dp/B004SP0WAQ/
It then only depends on the video quality of your phone. If that is satisfactory just get some sort of tripod adapter or other type of stand for phones and you're good to go. Definitely the cheapest solution if you already own a fitting phone.
If your phone is not an option I recommend you go with a webcam and USB microphone attached to your PC or Laptop. Most recording softwares have the option to choose a different audio source than your video recording device.
You can get a decent quality webcam for 20-30€ and a decent quality USB mic that can capture room audio for 15-20€.

My phone sucks, but I plan to buy a new one, anyways. Just to complete my question; so these USB ports on cameras do not support USB mics?

@Mateva I'm going to guess that 100:1 they do not work like that. For USB to work, it requires a complex/robust driver to be able to know how to communicate with a variety of outside devices when they get plugged in, and a camera has a very limited USB driver only capable of performing activities that the developers had intended it for like being a client device for data transfer (i.e. communicate with a host like a computer for transferring files).

Makes sense, thank you. But it would be good if they did.

The Canon VIXIA HF R500 is the least expensive consumer camcorder (from a major brand) that I have been able to find. I own one and love it. It has an external microphone jack that is compatible with my wireless lapel mic receiver.
http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/consumer/products/camcorders/consumer_camcorders/consumer_camcorders/vixia_hf_r500

If anyone is still looking for a similar setup that won't break the bank, I'd go with a laptop mounted cam - I have a Logitech HD Pro Webcam C920 which can be mounted on a tripod, too. The quality is amazing for the price (under $80), and I've used it to record lectures, demonstrations, as well as for recording and live streaming of some pretty unruly comedy and music shows. It has a stereo microphone that's really good (it made a crystal-clear recording of a live band in a noisy cafe from the back of the room), shoots well in low light, and has a decent zoom. It also does some onboard preprocessing, so HD recording won't overwhelm your laptop if it's an older/cheaper one.
With a tripod and a longer cable, you can do pretty much anything you'd do with a standard camcorder in a static situation. Depending on your software, you can attach an external mic to your laptop too, though I found the built-in mic of this cam superior to anything I've got.

Inspired by @Professor Sparkles♦'s answer, I decided to go for Samsung Galaxy S4* and a noise-reducing microphone with 3.5mm jack for Samsung (and other phones). I will keep you posted if this combination works well.
* I was offered Galaxy S4, S5 and LG G3 as the best video producing smartphones currently in the reseller's catalogue. My choice was based on desired quality\price trade-off.

Just because I tried out this combination and promised to reply... well, the microphone does clear the sound, but yet it is far from studio-quality sound.

Yes, you'll need to pay quite a lot of money for studio-quality sound - have you tried the phone's built in microphone ? It might even be better than the external mic you have.

You can try following

Kodak PlaySport (Zx5) HD Waterproof Pocket Video Camera - Black (2nd
Generation)
GoPro HERO4 Silver


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How to remove an unwanted dynamic object from a dynamic footage
I need to remove an object (in my case - a newspaper) that is being hold by a man who moves it a bit from side to side and sometimes it is hidden behind some other objects. How do I do this?
My idea is to use rotobrush in After Effects and somehow fill it using 'content aware fill', but I cannot find anything like 'content aware fill' option. I have seen some tutorials on web about how to  remove an object from a steady background, but this case is more complicated.
PS I don't want to mask it frame by frame in Photoshop.

You wouldn't mask it frame by frame in photoshop, you'd do that in After Effects and sometimes it's necessary for a scene to be usable in your film. Like it or not, as an editor it's often a necessary evil. Is there any reason why you need to mask out this newspaper? Do you have some sample footage we can look at to give you the best option?

Is the camera itself completely stationary?

No it isn't. It's a handheld shot taken at a ceremony, so reshooting it is not an option.

If the camera and background are both stationary (or perhaps very near stationary) you should be able to extrapolate a background plate from looking for frames where the man and paper are not blocking that part of the shot.  Once you have that background plate, you can mask the newspaper and expose the appropriate portion of the background plate.
This works best if the camera isn't moving, though you may be able to do a camera tracking in the event of small camera movements and still get workable results by matching the position and angle of the background plate to the camera (though it will likely require far more advanced background plates to account for any perspective changes).  With anything more than minimal movement of the camera though, the perspective changes will become too severe to compensate for and you won't be able to build a background plate from previous/future frames.
At that point, you would actually have to build a model of the scene in order to be able to render out the background to fill in with perspective adjustments and that would be far more complicated than re-shooting.
Note that this also does still require frame to frame adjustment of the mask and requires building the back plate by hand as well.  It is still non-trivial, but isn't quite masking frame by frame in Photoshop since the rotoscope tool should work for it.
If shadows are visible on the background as well, then you may need to make some animated masks to emulate the shadows on the background plate as well.  Either way, we're talking about a pretty elaborate operation most likely depending on the quality you need.  If any shadows from the actor are visible though (particularly soft shadows against not flat objects) the quality level will drop like a rock and the complexity will go higher fast.
If you do get hit with shadow issues or background movement issues (and reshooting really isn't an option) you may actually be served best by replacing the background entirely).  If you build a fixed background plate that doesn't have any shadows from the actors, people are not super likely to notice the lack of shadow compared to a gap in the shadow or a reconstructed shadow.  It would involve even further rotoscoping, but might be easier than trying to build a believable shadow.
Reshooting really is the best option, even in the ideal case though.

This is not possible without doing some major 3D work. If you manually paint in missing parts or use content aware fill you will have a extremely poor result, this is not in any way comparable to object removal in stills.
You will face heavy jitter and other artifacts if you don't have a ton of experience with this kind of work, with such big object you will have to rework the character in 3D which is also a very demanding task.
It will be a lot easier to just re-shoot the scene.
Though as AJ Henderson said, if you really have absolute perfect conditions and are ok with some artifacts its possible to do with retouchting in 2D but going by the fact that the newspaper seems to be moved around a lot this will be daunting task and if you have any possibility to re-shoot the scene than do it. It will look better, be faster and also easier.


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Converting video with different resolutions slightly affects in file size, why?
I'm converting a video with resolution 960x720p using HandBrake on Mac. When I convert two videos with exactly the same settings but with different resolutions, the file size is almost the same. Actually, the video with larger resolution (960x720p) is slightly smaller than the video with smaller resolution (720x540p). File size of the larger resolution video is 18,7 MB and the file size of the smaller resolution video is 19,1 MB. Like I said, the conversion settings are exactly the same, only resolution is different. I'm using H.264 codec with variable bitrate. Please check the settings from the attached screenshot.
Why the file size isn't smaller on the lower resolution video?

Think of resolution as the canvas of a painting and bitrate as the paint. You can change the size of the canvas and still use the same amount of paint, but the resulting image will be worse. For a larger canvas you need more paint if you would like to see the same overall quality as on a smaller one.

You are using the same bitrate for each video.  The bitrate determines how much data is used per second.  The resolution has nothing to do with how much data is used, it only impacts the number of points of data which are encoded (and thus determines part of the quality of the video output for a given bitrate).
What you end up with is a lower resolution file that more faithfully reproduces the original format since it has more data storage allocated per pixel where as the higher resolution file produces more pixels in the output, but as it has less data available per pixel, it is a less faithful reproduction.
It is a fluid question as to whether you lose more quality from the downscale or bitrate being used, so there is no preferred value to change.  In some situations the best overall quality will be to reduce the resolution and bitrate and in other cases the best result will be to keep the resolution the same but only reduce the bitrate.
If you intend to make different resolutions for different connection speeds, you should decrease both the resolution and the bitrate.  This will result in a smaller file with similar relative quality, so long as you use similar compression ratios (the relationship between the size of the input and the file size).
For example, as a rough guideline, if a video is 1080p and takes 225MB in total, then you would want the 720p version to take around 100MB because there is a little under half the pixels in a 720p video than there is in the 1080p video.  The amount of data used to store each pixel is thus the same, so the amount of artifacts should be pretty similar.  (Though the loss of detail will make it slightly unpredictable, so it doesn't hold exactly.  I'm oversimplifying a bit since compression is actually a pretty complicated field.)

Not necessarily, the bitrate can be quite different as long as you choose a variable bit rate TARGET like in this case and not a fixed bitrate. One video can tend to be quite higher than 700kbps and the other can be quite a bit lower than that which can affect the file size greatly depending on the length of the video.

True, quality VBR rather than data rate VBR will result in different file sizes since it will adjust the actual bitrate used for you.  I was only addressing bitrate VBR though, and especially for 2-pass it will be pretty close to the target, at least if the encoder is any good.

Sorry for replying to such an old answer, but I was about to ask a similar question. Is this the same reason why adjusting the framerate doesn't impact on overall file size?

Yes, it's going to pick the level of compression based on the bitrate and the number of frames or the resolution being used or the bit depth of color or any other factor is just going to impact the compression ratio that has to be used.

That has to do with choosing a variable bitrate aswell as how h264 essentially works. Some videos can be compressed better than others. If in one video for example you have a lot of "still" frames with not much moving the scene, h264 can compress that a lot better than a video with a lot of action.
H.264 is doing motion estimation and works in so called Group of Picture where there are only a few frames that actually contain a full video frame and the in-between frames just contain information to calculate a full frame during playback. That's the reason why you sometimes get these smearing artifacts when playing a h264 video.
Also the reason why resolution doesn't necessarily affect the file size that much and a higher resolution video can sometimes be smaller than a lower resolution video, it depends on the content.
That size difference should be less though if you encode both with constant quality.


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Is there a way to make Premiere reuse nested previews?
I have a rather effect-heavy clip in my project. I made it a separate sequence using nest from the context menu and rendered its preview to see it's ok.
Now that it's rendered(shows green on top of the timeline), I go to the main sequence and notice that Premiere has to render the nested sequence again.
My question is, is there any way to make Premiere reuse these already rendered previews in a nested sequence either through native settings or a plugin?
I'm using Premiere Pro CC on Win 8.1

Have you tried running the preview render to see if it does use the existing preview?  It still needs to render the sequence which it is nested in, but that doesn't necessarily mean it won't base it on the already rendered preview rather than recomputing all the effects.  (I don't know for sure what it will do, I'm just throwing it out there as an observation.)

Judging by the frustratingly long time it takes to do anything with the nested sequence, I'm guessing PP is computing all the effects again.

I don't think there is a way to accomplish this, since you can apply effects on nested sequences as well as to single clips, which means the nested sequence might look different in the main sequence than it does in the nested one. My humble guess is that that is also the reason why Premiere does not use the existing preview files.
A workaround would be to export the nested sequence and re-import the rendered file in your project, replacing the nested sequence. This of course means you won't be able to make changes to that part of your video anymore, as well as a slight loss in quality (unless you export the sequence using a visually lossless codec such as ProRes or DNxHD) ...

Accepted. Don't like the answer but there's not much anyone can do about this :) I don't see why PP couldn't just render previews for each nesting level separately, so when I change one insignificant effect at the top level, PP wouldn't have to render every damn nesting level with all the effects from bottom up again and again. It's just inefficient and frustrating :)


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Getting audio from a Bell & Howell Filmosound 8 Projector
I recently acquired a Bell & Howell Filmosound 8mm Projector, and several 8mm Sound Films.  To my delight, the motor and lamp work and the unit seems to work quite well.
I would love to figure out how to capture/play the sound from the sound films, but the unit is designed to connect to something else, presumably a preamp or stereo system of some sort.
Originally, this unit came with a special cable to connect to the atypical audio ports on the projector, but I don't have it.  Both ports are un-labled.  One appears to be an 1/8" headphone type jack, and the other is smaller.  I have tried connecting the 1/8" jack to a number of preamps/mixers, but have not been able to get any audio.  This leads me to believe the 1/8" jack may be for recording sound to a film, and the smaller one is for playback.
Has anyone used this or a similar model and been able to get sound?  Any help appreciated:

The projector you have is for use with the Bell and Howell model 450 cassette recorder. This projector has no optical or magnetic means of playing or recording sound. IN this system, which is a "Double Sound System", the sound is recorded on the 450 player/recorder via a special cable that goes between the camera and the recorder. The film itself has no magnetic or optical sound track on it. The recorder records both the audio from a microphone and sync information from the camera, hence the special cable running between camera and recorder. After the film is processed and returned, it threaded into the projector and then the cassette player/recorder is connected by means of another special cable to the projector, via the 2 jacks pointed out in your photo. The jack questioned is a size 3/32.
This special cable is used to deliver sync information that was originally recorded on the tape to the projector for lip sync sound reproduction
I would like to add that the stop signal that stops the tape player between "TAKES" is generated from within the 450 player/ recorder. This signal is automatically recorded on the tape every time the camera activation switch is released after each take. F.Y.I. this signal is 1.6 KHZ. I do have tech info for anybody who might be interested in this old sync/sound system.

the previous post is essentially correct as I've used this filmosound8 system a lot in the past. do you have the original recorded cassette tapes, they're about 5 minutes long, to go with the 50 ft. length of a super 8 film.  they contain the sound on one track and a (unheard) synch pulse on another, which when played properly governs that projector speed for synchronization.  you have to know which cassette tape goes with which 50 ft roll of film, if there're more than one.  the B&H 450 (or 450A) portable cassette recorder/player is fairly easy to come across on eBay, it uses 5 'C' batteries (or an AC adapter), and so is the special recorder-to-projector synch cable.  many valuable sound home movies were made this way but unfortunately modern reproduction is practically non-existent because people are unaware of this particular equipment
perhaps though your original question hasn't been answered directly enough.  about the 2 jacks on the projector - THEY DO NOT CARRY AUDIO SOUNDTRACK.  They carry synchronization pulses from the special B&H 450 cassette recorder only (for playback of that cassette tape, no recording).  Trying to 'hear' anything out of them so would be pointless


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iMovie Help: Transition still keeps the previous clips' audio
See where the cursor/line is? One of the cast members are still talking -- in the middle of a transition, how is that possible? Considering we see it END right before it fades to black? I have made it to fade out to black but still nothing.

Generally speaking, a transition will start before the end of a clip.  You need enough video to have something to play while the transition is occurring.  The video will normally keep running until the end of the transition and that also means that the audio will keep running until the transition finishes.  You would need to play with the volume adjustments to bring down the level of the track that you don't want to have keep playing.

The transition seems to catch audio from the next video. What worked for me was to detach the audio from that next clip and then play the segment.


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Looking for an accurate Playback FPS from a video
I've made a 1080P video using After Effects, and after it has been rendered the playback is a bit stutter-y. Now I am fairly certain that this stuttering is a result of the computer struggling with the playback, but I need to be able to prove this.
I was kinda hoping VLC has a way of displaying the FPS of the video being played, but as far as I can tell it has no such thing (only display the FPS of the rendering).
Can anyone point me in the direction of some software that will give me the Playback FPS of a video?
Many thanks!

What codec did you render to?  Could you maybe render to something a little easier to play back?

Personally, I use fraps. The only reason I use fraps is because I used to record desktop footage a ton. However, if you get the free version of fraps, it should allow you to see the framerate of the video playing back while the program is open.

doesnt this give the frame rate for the entire screen, rather than just the video that is playing? (sorry if stupid question!)

No worries, Jimmery! Fraps will analyse specific windows that have updating imagery. For instance, fraps can simultaneously show the FPS of a program (like a video game) you have open and a movie you're playing on your PC. They'll be unique and specific to the application. The FPS counter will appear in the top right corner of the application to avoid confusion. "[Giving] the frame rate for the entire screen" doesn't necessarily make sense, especially considering that portions of the screen are just pictures (like a desktop background) and not motion pictures.

Note that this will give the number of times the video player refreshes the window per second, not necessarily the frame rate of video playback, but it should likely still be meaningful information for your purposes.

@AJHenderson I work on a 120Hz monitor and I can say in confidence that my result is often not 120 when using fraps. When I watch movies it's 24, when I play games it's whatever my PC can muster. Are you saying that fraps is limited to the refresh rate? That would make sense. It is, however, not reporting the refresh rate but the frame rate of the application, unless I'm misunderstanding something.

@ScottJamesWalter - FRAPS reports the number of refresh calls that are made by the application to the video buffer.  For a game, this occurs once every time the game renders a frame, for a video player, this may occur once per frame or it may occur multiple times per frame if the video player is doing some kind of interpolation or if it sends a frame on time regardless of if it has finished decoding the next frame.  It depends on how the player behaves.  It is still likely a pretty accurate approach with most players, but it isn't completely error proof.

In either case, the number is likely to be lower than the actual FPS of the video in this case, which still would confirm their suspicion, however even having a higher number or the same number as the video frame rate may not rule it out.

You can try transcoding to a lower quality format that would be easier to play back.  If the video itself is stuttering, then the lower quality will still stutter in the same way.  If you are limited by your playback speed, then the lower quality version should play smoothly.  If it plays smooth at lower quality, then you know that the original file is good.

Sometimes videos straight out of After Effects can be slow, or "stutter-y". What I've found is that bringing the video into Premiere Pro and exporting it from Premiere (essentially re-rendering the video in Premiere) can help with this significantly.


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Premiere Pro CC: Multiple instances of a panel in the workspace?
I've worked with Premiere Pro for a while now and created my own workspace based on the panels I need most frequently. I have but one problem: I would like to have multiple instances of the Effect Cotrols Panel within my workspace. This is possible with the Project Panel, however I couldn't find an option to multiply other panels. Is there a way to accomplish this?

Unfortunately, there isn't a way to do this in Premiere in my experience. As far as I know, the only panels you can have multiple of are the Project and Sequence panels.

Accepted. Don't like it, but at least I know that it's not possible now. Well, maybe Adobe will add that feature sometime ... thanks anyway °v°

Just out of curiosity, for what purpose did you need multiple Effects panels?

Well I generally like my workspace, however sometimes the Effect Settings panel is to small for acurate adjustments. In this case, I need to drag it somewhere else or expand it, which becomes quite a bother over time. So I wanted to have two instances of the panel, one larger than the other, so that I could use whichever seemed fitting ...

Hmmmm...yeah, that's a good point. The only thing I can think of is to have 2 different workspaces, one with the big Effects Settings and one with the small Effects Settings, and just switch between them as needed, though admittedly this is a bit obnoxious.


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Benro and Manfrotto Monopods - QR System
I was looking into some monopods to improve my on-the-run potential for some upcoming projects and I'd like to unify all my gear with one QR system so I can switch from a slider to tripod to monopod with relative ease (if needed). I'm interested in these monopods:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/945109-REG/manfrotto_mvm500a_pro_fluid_monopod_with.html
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=&sku=967703&gclid=CJ3B25_XzL8CFQYxaQodWxQA6Q&Q=&is=REG&A=details

Quality and opinions aside, I'm trying to find out the QR system used for both. What I've found is that Benro ONLY sells the QR plate and not the mounting portion, and Manfrotto has a variety of different QR systems. Can you only adapt Benro products by buying compatible Benro heads (S4 in this case), and which Manfrotto QR system is compatible with the monopod I listed?
Thanks!

Have you considered buying an entirely separate set of QR plates to unify your entire setup? For instance, in our setup, we use a tripod, a monopod, and a GlideCam with various attachments for each of these (rail systems, teleprompters, etc.). By adding this (relatively) cheap QR plate to the top of each stabilization method, we can switch our cameras around all systems with ease, and the QR plate can go on any standard 3/8" or 1/4" screw.

This is a good idea. I was thinking about maybe saving some money where I could by picking devices that already had the QR system I wanted to use. However, this is definitely something I'll keep in mind.

In my experience, doing this could potentially cost you more money down the road because "proprietary" QRs like that can be incredibly expensive, unlike mounting a cheaper QR (like the one linked above) onto a proprietary QR. Also, the linked QR is really nice since it has 2 level bubbles attached, one in each direction. Sometimes the levels on tripod bubbles aren't always accurate - it's best to get the level as close as possible to the camera.

Would something like this QR plate be advisable on a heavy duty shoulder rig or for usage inside of a cage or is that unrealistic?

Absolutely. We use this QR on a shoulder rig and it works beautifully. This is a high-quality and very durable product. Whenever I get a new tripod, etc. I always order another one of these QRs. I've had my oldest one for over 2 years and it's still in great shape. It's a dual-locking QR, meaning to release the top you have to both twist a "locking" part and push a button - just a little extra insurance that your camera won't come tumbling out. I've never had an issue with it.

Any idea if that plate is compatible with the Manfrotto plates?  It looks incredibly similar in design to the Manfrottos, including the tension lock and the push button latch.

Unfortunately I think the [Manfrotto 3433PL 577] (http://www.amazon.com/Manfrotto-577-Connect-Adapter-Mounting/dp/B00009XV3M/ref=cm_cd_ql_qh_dp_t) is a different size, although the two look very similar aside from the Giottos' leveling bubbles (which are a huge plus IMO).

The Manfrotto is a 500 series, so it uses the Video Camera Plate.  I'm not sure what you mean about adapting Benro products.

Yeah, that looks like it. However, I wouldn't necessarily need the plate but the device that it locks into, rather. I need one plate that is screwed into my camera that would get transferred to all of my devices.

I unfortunately do not see any quick release adapter mounts for the 500PLong.


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Change output using a .jsx script for After Effects CS6
I've made a script that will loop through a (.txt) interchanging elements of a certain composition.
Within the script, I add each changed composition to the render queue and output it.
How can I pragmatically output the format in h.264 (.mp4) instead of it defaulting to (.avi).
I've discovered that you can just change the default output module via edit -> templates -> output module, but still.. is there anyway of doing this via script?
Thanks

So, the answer to your question is 'yes, but...'
It's perfectly feasible, but you have to create an output module with the settings that you want, and then save it to your computer.  You can create this by going to Edit -> Templates -> Output Module.  Click on the 'New' button in the pop-up window, and then Edit it for the settings you need (quicktime, h.264, etc).  Save it as a useful name ("H264HighQuality" or something like that).  Save the output module, and you'll be able to access it from your scripts from there on out.
In order to use it in your script, just use:
app.project.renderQueue.items.add(myComp).applyTemplate("H264HighQuality");
As long as you've made the template first, you can access it in your scripts as many times as you want.  However, After Effects does NOT allow you to programmatically create Output Modules or alter them on the fly, unfortunately.  But you only need to make the template once -- as long as you have that template on the computer you're running the script, it should work just fine.

This answers my question. Thanks for the response!

To update @MBrizzle answer, this functionality was added to After Effects CC 2014. There are 4 new methods:

RenderQueueItem object getSetting, setSetting methods
OutputModule object getSetting, setSetting methods

You can find more about them at http://blogs.adobe.com/aftereffects/2014/04/new-changed-after-effects-cc-2014.html

To update your answer Output Module setSetting only allow these keys: Audio Bit Depth
Audio Channels
Audio Sample Rate
Channels :
Color : Premultiplied (Matted)
Crop : false
Crop Bottom
Crop Left
Crop Right
Crop Top : 0
Depth : Millions of Colors
Format : QuickTime
Include Project Link : true
Include Source XMP Metadata : false
Lock Aspect Ratio : true
Output Audio : Auto
Output File Info : [object Object]
Post-Render Action :
Resize : false
Resize Quality : High
Resize to : HDV/HDTV 720 25
Starting #
Use Comp Frame Number
Use Region of Interest
Video Output

No codecs allowed


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YouTube Compression: Why?
There's a lot of advice on the internet on encoding settings to apply to your video before uploading to YouTube (https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?hl=en,

, ...). They say that not only will compression allow your video to upload faster but it will make it look better when played back on YouTube (an example of this is at 0:18 in the YouTube link above).
What I also read is that YouTube re-encodes any video that you upload (example: "Telestream Episode product manager Kevin Louden started by noting that YouTube re-encodes all video uploaded to the site" - http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/Encoding-for-YouTube-How-to-Get-the-Best-Results-83876.aspx).
So the obvious question for me is if YouTube re-encodes anything that it's asked to upload, why should different codecs make a difference to final playback quality on YouTube? To get the best playback quality on YouTube, shouldn't I upload a lossless file and let YouTube compress it however it wants?
I don't care about upload time or file size, I just care about playback quality on YouTube.

Those suggested bitrates are high enough to be transparent (with a decent encoder).  They don't suggest even higher probably for bandwidth cost reasons.  (for them).  I have NO idea why they specify such a tiny GOP, though.  A keyframe every 1/2 second?  A video I downloaded from youtube was 640x480 h.264 baseline (yuck), with a keyframe every 3 secs or so, even absent scenecuts.  That's a lot shorter than the x264 default of 250 frames, but also a LOT longer than every 1/2 second.

With all the guidelines on how many B frames, and GOP size, it made me wonder if youtube would use your bitstream untouched as the 1080p or 720p stream if it met all the criteria.

Youtube parallelizes the encode of the uploaded file via segmenting, so a low GOP probably makes it more efficient for them.

I've answered a similar question some time ago. YouTube added a few codecs since then but all the info there still applys: How does YouTube encode my uploads and what codec should I use to upload?
Short answer: Yes if you are concerned about maximum quality a lossless codec or visually lossless codec is the way to go. Re-encoding always means loss of information if you re-encode with a lossy codec like h264.
Saying that videos will look better with compression is just a wrong statement.
Compression reduces file size, that's the only benefit you get from it. Best case you don't loose information with that compression but with most codecs like h264 you do because they discard information and re-arrange it in order to achieve a high compression.
Though different codecs do have an affect on the outcome, encoding a video with MPEG2 or h264 makes a huge difference. The former will usually have way more compression artifacts depending on your encoding settings than an h264 encoded video with similar bitrate.
So if your source is already having artifacts the second encode from YouTube won't make it look any better but worse.

You should upload the highest quality your tubes can afford. The current YouTube help text on uploads is misleading. It states:

Your videos will process faster if you encode into a streamable file format. For more information, visit our Help Center.

It contradicts what Colleen Henry, formerly of Google, now at Facebook said:

Colleen Henry, Video Hacker, Google Video Infrastructure, with some
great suggestions to help you get the best video quality on YouTube:
It's important to think of the files you upload to YouTube as golden
masters, as they will be used as source material to generate video
streams for years to come. Simply put, the better the quality of the
file you upload to YouTube today, the better quality the viewer's
experience will be throughout your video's life on YouTube.
As displays increase in size, compression techniques become more
efficient, playback devices become more sophisticated, and internet
connections improve, so will the quality YouTube will be able to
provide to the viewers of your videos. This means, while you may reach
a limit on perceived benefits from higher bitrates or more efficient
encoding if you were to test it today, that does not mean you should
stop there. You will see a huge benefit over the lifetime of your
video being available on YouTube, as internet speeds, hardware, and
software evolve. Upload the best quality video that you can create and
squeeze through your internet connection!
Bonus tips:

Many encoders can spend more CPU time to create a much more efficient
file. If you have a powerful computer, but a slow internet connection,
look into using more complex and efficient encoding to save upload
time.

You can noticeably improve the quality of your video on YouTube by
using a sophisticated, scene aware, denoising filter prior to
uploading.

Keyframe interval doesn't really matter much at this moment in time,
but please keep it under 5 for VOD.

The sample rate of your audio should match your source's sample rate
in which it was produced.

If you make sure to use a streaming format, like an mkv, .mp4 or a
.mov, with the metadata at the front of the container we will begin
processing your video WHILE you are uploading it, drastically reducing
overall turnaround time. This will make things MUCH faster, with no
negative side effect. You can add the metadata atom to the front of
your file with something qtfaststart, or select it when you are
creating the file in Squeeze, Episode, etc.

It is ideal to use
constant quality encoding. This will let you create a high quality
variable bitrate file, at the speed of a single pass. It will maintain
a consistent target quality throughout the file, rather than trying to
allocate bits to hit an arbitrary bitrate, which can easily
under-shoot or over-shoot, and with two pass, take extra long to
create.

You can put uncompressed PCM audio in an .mov or .mkv
container and deliver it to us if you like. However, make sure not to
create multiple discrete mono streams when you do it.

source: http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/Encoding-for-YouTube-How-to-Get-the-Best-Results-83876.aspx

What's the lie?

I guess more of misleading than a lie. While it is true they may process faster if they are in a streamable format (because processing can start right away) it gives the impression that that is what users should do, upload a streamable format. What users should do is upload the highest quality they can, not a necessarily a streamable format. The help text on YouTube should clarify that.

I think you're assuming that they want everyone to upload high-bitrate videos. More likely, they are concerned about controlling storage capacity expansion for the raw sources, so their policy is to decide on a minimum threshold and set that as the guideline. Savvy users can tweak their videos as they see fit whereas all the green users don't go around uploading 30 mbps feeds of their cat and dog going at each other.

Ultimately youtube is thinking about upload quality versus upload speed.
If someone tries to upload lossless on a less-than-amazing internet connection, they'll get frustrated and quit. If they upload with a lossy codec which is less-than-satisfactory (eg. motion-jpeg or mpeg2) they'll either take a long time to upload, have a poor quality end result, or both!
The best solution is the upload a video using a codec which has the best quality-to-size ratio, which at this point in time (2015) is either h264 or webm (in terms of codecs which are widely-supported at least).
If you use a decent encoder (eg. MeGUI) and high quality settings (eg. multiple passes, high maximum bitrate) it is doubtful you will see a significant difference between uploading lossless and h264. However, the filesize will be significantly smaller and the upload time a fraction of the lossless upload time.
Perhaps some day when we have quadruple-light-speed internet connections, we won't have to worry about these 'implementation details' - however until then, quality-to-filesize ratios will always be important, particularly in the age of 4K and ever-increasing screen resolutions.
Hope this helps.


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Using tablet/smartphone as external dslr monitor
I know there are apps like DslrDashboard and more but I would like to just get a real time monitor for my Nikon D5100. How is that possible?`
Of course connected wiyh a Hdmi-cable.

You can't do that. There is no tablet on the market (right now) that offers an HDMI input or any other physical display input. Your only option would be to stream compressed video over the USB (or Lightning on iPads) connection or Wifi to an app that displays that stream.


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Auto split comp into separate render items?
Is there a script/plugin that will either (a) take layers from a comp and create separate render queue items for each layer; or (b) use markers in a comp to generate separate renders?
I thought there used to be one ... "RenderLayers" or something ...
Essentially I need to split up a long comp into separate output files.
thanks!

There is a script called "rd_RenderLayers" from redefinery, maybe thats what you mean. It does exactly that, adding every layer to your render queue.
Unfortunately his website is on hiatus but the downloads still work, you can download the latest version here.

It took me a long time to find that, luckily he gives out the direct links to his scripts if you ask him on Twitter.

Ha, i tried on twitter .. but no response

The general way to do this now is to use nested compositions and export each composition separately.


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How to switch New Composition Settings Duration from Base 25 (time) to Frames?
In the tutorial I am doing the instructor has their Composition Settings enabling them to input the amount of Frames they would like the Composition to be. Picture is a little faded, it says "Frames @ 24 fps"
image http://assemblyx.net/Untitled-1.png
Now my Composition Settings only allow me to set in time.
image http://assemblyx.net/Untitled-2.png
How can I set in Frames?

Oddly enough, this has to be done in the composition window itself.  In the top left-hand corner of your timeline window, you know the little orange numbers that tell you the current timecode?  If you CMD + click on that (ctrl + click on windows), it'll switch to Frames instead of timecode.
When you hit CMD + K to bring up the composition settings again, you'll see that Duration and the other relevant categories are now shown as Frames instead of timecode.
Note that this will shift your whole timeline to Frames (including the markers on the timeline itself), which you may or may not want.  If you just want to have it for frames while you're editing the composition settings, though, you can always just CMD + click on the number in the upper lefthand corner of the timeline to switch it back to timecode.


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Find/replace duplicate comps?
I'm working on a giant project file that was obviously created by importing lots of other projects into one big one.
Many of the comps use many of the same precomps ... from projects that were copies of each other ... so there are many precomps that are probably identical, but each is used in a different master comp.
Is there any way to (a) check if 2 comps are truly identical?
And (b) automatically replace all references to identical comps with references to just one copy, so that the project can then be properly reduced?

I do not know of and couldn't find a script that does this already but it would be certainly possible to write one. After Effects doesn't have a functionality built-in for that.
With the help of ExtendScript you can write very powerful extensions for After Effects and its very easy to get going with it. Just open up the "Adobe ExtenScript Toolkit" that gets installed with every CS suite and load up an example for After Effects and have a look at the JavaScript documentation. While you can also script with AppleScript and Batch Script the documentation for the JavaScript version is a lot better.
You can access it under the "Help" menu. Most importantly look at the After Effects Scripting guide. It can be found for different CS/CC versions here.
What I would do is start to iterate through all your compositions, grab the current composition in your iteration, get an array of all the layer names in that composition and then iterate with that array through all compositions and compare the array with the array of all the other compositions. Best to not sort the arrays in case you used generic names for layers and unique layer ordering is important.
Unless you have micro changes in your duplicate comps like changed property values and keyframes this approach would be effective.
If you do have micro changes you would, after having fetched all comps with duplicate layers, also have to access every layer in your array and compare every property with the corresponding layer in the other comp.
You then delete all true duplicates of a comp and while doing that replace them with a link of your now unique comp in all occurrences in other comps.
Shouldn't be much code but it could take some time to write if you have never used Adobe ExtendScript.
On another note, a very helpful plugin to keep the composition import madness at a minimum is BAO Dynamic Comp.

That kind of coding is beyond me ... but would be great if someone else wrote it! I wonder if there's a "suggestion box" at aescripts.com...

This sounds like a good challenge.