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How to encode a video at 30 FPS from images taken at 7 FPS
I have no knowledge whatsoever about video encoding, I have an application written in OpenGL and I am saving the frames it generated into png images. The frames from my app are at 7 FPS and I am trying to create a video from those.
To that purpose I use ffmpeg like this
ffmpeg -framerate 30 -i img%03d.png -c:v libx264 -r 30 -pix_fmt yuv420p out.mp4
which was taken from this site, however I was wondering if it is possible to have a video that shows the animation at 30 FPS?

Similar question and manual.

Just tweak the -framerate parameter to get the desired results.

I'm using the below code to do the same thing.
ffmpeg -framerate 30 -i img%03d.png -c:v libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p -crf 23 output.mp4

Breaking down the command:
ffmpeg             <- call ffmpeg
  -framerate 30    <- set the input framerate to 30
  -i img%03d.png   <- read PNG images with filename img001, img002, img003, etc..
                     img can be changed to another prefix
                     %03d can be changed to %04d for 0001, %05d for 00001 formats, etc...
  -c:v libx264     <- Set the codec to libx264
  -pix_fmt yuv420p <- Set the pixel format to planar YUV 4:2:0, 12bpp
  -crf 23          <- set the Constant Rate Factor to 23 (default value)
  -output.mp4      <- the output filename

This reads the input at 30 fps (the -framerate 30 option) and encodes it using the libx264 codec with constant rate factor of 23 (the -crf 23 option).

How do you compute the -crf value? What does it represent compared to the 30 fps and 7 frames per second in the source? (i.e. is it "30 - 7 = 23"?)

It's not related to the fps (I think). Did you read the linked page about the constant rate factor (crf)?

Oh, yeah, so I really don't understand how your answer was chosen as the answer. It's wrong. In OP's question, the input FPS is 7 and the output 30. You are not taking care of that in your examples.

Thanks for trying to improve my answer. I don't entirely follow, Could you perhaps explain what is not being addressed? The question asker wants a video that plays 30 of their frames per second. The command in my answer outputs 30 frames per second. The framerate at which the frames are captured (7) seems not relevant, right?

Assuming you count from 1, frames 1 to 7 from the input have to be played in 1 second (spread over 30 frames in the output video). Then frames 8 to 15 will be played on the 2nd second of the output video. Etc. I think that with your command line you will end up playing 30 frames of input in 1 second (a little over 4 times too fast).

That's certainly one way to interpret it, but the question asker did not specify that that's what they want, so I gave an answer based on my interpretation. As the question asker did not post comments (e.g. "it's playing way too fast now") and accepted the answer it appears the answer was helpful (to some extent). Feel free to edit my answer if you believe it displays incorrect information or post your own answer if you would like to obtain reputation points.

Image inputs
Default frame rate for image inputs is 25. You can change it with the -framerate input option. Example for 24 fps:
ffmpeg -framerate 24 -i input_%03d.jpg -vf format=yuv420p output.mp4

-vf format=yuv420p (or the legacy alias -pix_fmt yuv420p) will ensure compatible chroma subsampling for MP4. Otherwise, ffmpeg will try to preserve color fidelity, but most players can't handle advanced chroma subsampling.
The output will use the same frame rate as the input. So you do not need to set an output frame rate. But there are a few reasons to do so. See Using a different frame rate for image inputs and video output below.

Video inputs
Use the -r output option:
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -r 25 output.mp4

Using a different frame rate for image inputs and video output
Why? For example, you may want all images to be displayed for 1 second each (1 fps). But most players can't play very low frame rates (about 6 fps or lower). So you can make ffmpeg use a different output frame rate. The output will look like 1 fps, but will actually be a normal frame rate, such as 25 fps.
Example: input images at 1 fps, but make the output 25 fps.
ffmpeg -framerate 1 -i input_%03d.png -r 25 output.mp4

Frames will be duplicated or dropped to match the desired output frame rate.
The image demuxer uses -framerate, while the output frame rate is set using -r.

Error: Option framerate not found
The -framerate option:

Is not a generic option. It doesn't work for everything.
Is only an input option.
Only works with certain demuxers (including: images, x11grab, rawvideo).
You probably only need to use the -r output option. See the Video inputs section above.

ffmpeg version 3.2.2 tells me: Option framerate not found. :-(

Yes, you are right. But nevertheless the option -framerate does not exist anymore. I will delete my comment, as it really has nothing to do with converting a series of images to a video with a certain framerate.

@erik -framerate does exist. It's used by the image and rawvideo demuxers and some input devices such as x11grab and v4l2.

Oh, ok. Sorry for the noise.

Where is the option -framerate documented? I've read the man ffmpeg page, but I couldn't find it. Any pointer, perhaps?

OK, found it... FFMPEG-DEVICES(1).

For MP4 to MP4 conversion, ffmpeg -y -i in.mp4 -r 30 out.mp4 just worked. -framerate seems to not work in this case.

@ThomasWeller -framerate is not a generic option. It is a special input option only for certain demuxers: image inputs, some capturing inputs such as x11grab and v4l2 and a few others. The original question was about images, so that's why the answer involves -framerate, although it seems like many users are not noticing this. I'll update the answer.

ffmpeg -framerate 30 -i img%03d.png output.mp4

will be sufficient in the latest version of ffmpeg.

Dont forget the -pix_fmt yuv420p or you may end up with files that many software tools don't like: https://trac.ffmpeg.org/ticket/8856

I don't see how that would be sufficient since the input is at 7 fps. That frame rate has to appear somewhere.

You are talking about video interpolation. There is no way for 7 fps to become 30 fps without video interpolation... Basically you want to get 30fps from the start, in the process of making videos... As video interpolation will take lots of resources and time, and it might be filled with artifacts. I heard you can make a single shot picture into a short movies, with adobe, but lots of manual work there...

Ah, sure there is. Modern neuronal networks can do a lot of fun things along these lines, cf. https://www.youtube.com/c/DenisShiryaev/videos

It sounds like you may the resultant video to have 30 frames per second for compatibility with certain devices (e.g. a DVD player), but you want the content to play back at an effective 7 frames per second to maintain the original temporal resolution. In that case, you'll need to use an FFmpeg video filter like tblend or minterpolate to interpolate the 7 frames' worth of content to 30 frames (with varying visual changes), or use a third party application like butterflow which itself uses FFmpeg.
If you purely want the 7 fps source content to be sped up to 30 fps (shortening the playback time ~4:1) then the other -framerate based answers will suffice.


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Which part of a computer is critic to work on 4k footage
I'm working in a compagny that starts working on 4k video footages. The person responsible for the video editing is complaining that working on those footage is really a pain.
So I'm wondering which part of its hardware configuration should be changed to make his life easier.
He's mainly working on Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effect.
Thanks for any shared experiences

The hard drive is usually the biggest factor when working with big footage files.
Upgrade his workstation with a reasonably sized SSD, I recommend atleast 500GB to ensure you can work on multiple projects without moving files around.
The SSD speed of course is the important factor that would speed up the workflow, so be sure to not buy a cheap but big SSD but one that has fast read and write speeds. Read speed being  more important than write speed.
When working with Adobe Products, a mid-range GPU can help a lot aswell when doing a lot of color correction and other "effects" work. Many effects and plugins nowadays are GPU accelerated and will be even more in the future.
I recommend buying a mid-range consumer or "gamer" GPU instead of a so called workstation GPU. They are incredibly overpriced with nearly no additional stability and usually worse performance. You only benefit from them if you have very special needs (like 10bit displays or frame locking) and need certain warranties or support from the Manufacturer.
Also as AJ Henderson mentioned, you should have around 16GB RAM or 12GB on 3 channel CPUs. 8GB or less will perform horribly with modern Adobe Products, they use a lot more RAM to increase performance since they switched to 64bit.

I'd add that you want a minimal amount of memory of about 12 to 16GB of RAM too.  There isn't a lot of advantage in adding a ton of RAM relative to other possible upgrades, but too little RAM will potentially cause issues, particularly for AE where RAM Preview will be greatly limited.

Oh right, I assumed that to be standard today but yes, thats very important

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Premiere Ignoring DNG file grade
I have an image sequence of DNG files. I have opened one of these files in Adobe Camera Raw (Photoshop CC) and tweaked it, saving the settings. I've then batch processed all the images in ACR using this setting. I can open any of the images and see the settings are applied.
However when I import the image sequence into Premiere CC, all the settings are ignored and the image is rendered as it was before it was tweaked.
Why is Premiere ignoring the DNG settings?

It appears that this is the 'expected behaviour'. Certainly not what I expected.
It seems that ACR doesn't play well with Premiere. So you can't pre-grade your footage before edit. Adobe expect you to use Speedgrade for your grading, despite the fact it isn't a patch on ACR. Your only option appears to be to bring the image sequence into After Effects which allows you to use ACR on import or by editing original at any point. Of course you then lose the speedy rendering of Premiere and all the other good stuff.

That actually kind of makes sense.  The speedy rendering in Premiere is probably in part due to not having to deal with the not so speedy rendering in ACR.  Thanks for sharing what you found.  It matches up with what I thought was likely the case, but I wasn't sure enough to answer.  Guess I should have probably commented, but glad you found it for sure.

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


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What exactly do the sequence settings do?
Sooo, this may sound fairly stupid, especially for professional editors, but I'd like to know the role of the sequence settings in Premiere Pro. I know that the format of the preview files depends on the sequence settings, but apart from that, do they serve any purpose? I mean, regardless of the sequence settings, I can export my video to any format I want. So I'd e.g. like to know if it makes a great difference if I choose AVCHD 1080p25 or DSLR 1080p25 ...

The entries for the creation of a new sequence are only presets.  They load things like pixel pitch, resolution, color depth, etc.  Many of these can be changed after creation, particularly if you haven't added anything to the timeline yet.  You can also make additional presets if you have frequent use of settings that there isn't already a preset for (or you can even manually select all the settings and not use a preset.)
This is the actual sequence settings:

As you can see, the framerate(timebase), frame size, pixel pitch (aspect ratio), fields, display format, audio sample rate and audio display format make up the primary settings.
There are additionally settings for how previews are rendered, which particularly matters if you intend to use previews in the rendering of final output, otherwise it just impacts what you see during editing (after preview renders have finished.)
While you can export in different formats, that will result in scaling if the resolution differs.  The sequence settings determine how the video renders, the export settings determine how the rendered frames are saved in to a final output.

So the sequence settings only determine the quality of the preview files, but not of the final export, right? And those two are in no way connected or influence each other?
And I heard that the sequence setting also includes the codec that is used to render the preview file. This would mean that depending on the material, the sequence settings could effect the rendering time for the preview files, is that correct?

@Gin-San - no, the sequence settings determine the render.  You render at sequence settings and encode at the output settings.  My understanding is that Premiere builds up a list of full resolution images (based on the sequence settings) and passes them to the encoder.  The encoder then takes those images and encodes them in the output format and specification.  If you had a 1 pixel by 1 pixel sequence and output it as 1000 pixels by 1000 pixels, I believe you would just get 1 pixel by 1 pixel scaled up to 1000 by 1000.  That should be easy to verify, but I don't have Premiere on this PC.

That's a good explanation, thanks! I saw exporting as one unique process rather than two seperate procedures (rendering and encoding), that made it hard for me to understand the difference between sequence and export settings. Well it's a little confusing that the sequence presets are haply named after camera types and codecs as well °v° Thanks!


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Re-encoding Archival Movies
I have some old quicktime movies from a project I did in 2005.  The client came back recently and wants to do some changes and run off a new version, and since I've got all his media restored at the moment I think I'm going to reencode my workprint videos into something more standard.
The movies I have are Miro DC30+ MJPEG quicktimes, 320x240, which at the time was pretty standard.  I'd like to reencode them as something that's liable to be readable in 5-10 years, I got lucky that the DC30 MJPEG was readable at all.  I was thinking Apple ProRes, since so much gear seems to read this nowadays...

Are you sure it was 2005?  By the late 90s, early 2000s even consumer gear had moved over primarily to DV at 720 by 480 resolution.  The last major platform I used that was quarter res based was an Amiga Video Toaster and that was fairly early 90s tech.  By 2005, an unaided consumer PC could handle editing full resolution DV without issue.

No, they're from 2004; they were work pictures meant to work with Pro Tools, and Pro Tools has always had squirrely sync issues with DV picture, DC30 was still pretty common until the Apple started shipping PCI-X (I recall).  These were probably originally 640x480 captures to DC30 from an SVHS telecine.  MJPEG pix was also a lot smaller and 200 GB was considered a big hard drive.  I think I have Radius VideoVision (NuBus!) picture from 2000 in here somewhere...

Ah, gotcha.  That makes more sense.  Personally I was a PC/Matrox guy.  I have lots of archival Matrox MJPEG footage (at 720 by 480) from before they switched to having DV support and eventually moving off the Matrox RT tech all together when PCs got fast enough.  I have LOTS of DVD-Rs and HDDs sitting around though.

For such low quality footage (320 by 240 was quarter resolution even in the early 2000s), I'd probably go with DV format.  It's a major video standard that, while not used much anymore (though HDV is still used), was a major video standard and thus isn't going anywhere quickly (just look at how MPEG-1 has hung around).  It is designed for high quality video in SD formats and was one of the most common standards for that type of video even at the time of your project.
Many of the MJPEG formats were a pain even when they were new.  I know I had issues with my Matrox MJPEG format content not working without some level of difficulty even when it was current.  DV on the other hand, I've never had a problem with anywhere, including current systems.


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Footage of different framerates in Adobe Premiere Pro
Background information
I'm going to create a audio/visual production with two camera's. One camera uses 1920 x 1080 with 25fps rate. The other camera is the GoPro camera. There are several video settings for the GoPro camera, these are:

3840 x 2160 with 15 or 12.5fps
2704 x 1520 with 30, 25, or 24fps
1920 x 1440 with 48, 30, 25, or 24fps
1920 x 1080 with 60, 50, 48, 30, 25, or 24fps
1280 x 960  with 100, 60, or 50fps
1280 x 720  with 120, 100, 60, 50, 30 or 25fps
848 x 480  with 240fps

After recording I'm going to merge the recorded footage from both camera's together in Adobe Premiere Pro. The settings I will use for the project are 1920x1080, 25fps.
My question
Which video setting would you recommend me for the GoPro?
I could go for the 1920x1080 with 25fps rate. But than again I have the possibility to use 50fps. But than again, would the 50fps footage give the 25fps project somehow a quality loss?

It depends on the shutter speed being used on the other camera.  If the shutter speed is faster than 1/50th of a second, then shooting at 50fps and discarding every other frame would be the same as shooting at 25fps, but it means that your shutter speed must be faster than 1/50th of a second.
If light isn't an issue, then the faster frame rate won't have an impact, but if light may require a higher ISO and degrade the footage unnecessarily.  Similarly, if you aren't planning to need any slow motion shots, then there isn't really any great advantage to shooting at 50fps as you gain nothing.
Overall, say go with 1080p and 25fps on the GoPro unless you need to do slow motion and have sufficient light, in which case go 50fps on the second camera (or better yet, do 25fps for all but the slow motion shots and move to 60fps for the slow motion shots since the frame rate will be altered anyway.)


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FFMpeg and HLS, videos need to load in their entirety before they start playing
I am using ffmpeg to generate a segmented list of files in order to stream them to an iOS app. The list of files is generated fine but when it comes time to play them, the video needs to be downloaded in its entirety before playback starts. This behaviour seems to be the case on iOS, Safari and VLC.
Does anybody know why this is happening and how I can improve the performance of playback? I have complete control over how the files are recorded in iOS, as well as how they are processed. Here is a sample stream:
http://www.bytesizecreations.com/storie-test/hls.m3u8
Here are my ffmpeg commands to generate the segments from the file:
ffmpeg -i joined.ts -flags -global_header -vcodec copy -acodec copy -map 0 -f segment -segment_time 2 -segment_list hls.m3u8 -segment_list_size 999999 -segment_format mpegts out%03d.ts
Here is the output of ffprobe on the file:

  libavutil      54.  7.100 / 54.  7.100
  libavcodec     56.  1.100 / 56.  1.100
  libavformat    56.  4.101 / 56.  4.101
  libavdevice    56.  0.100 / 56.  0.100
  libavfilter     5.  1.100 /  5.  1.100
  libavresample   2.  1.  0 /  2.  1.  0
  libswscale      3.  0.100 /  3.  0.100
  libswresample   1.  1.100 /  1.  1.100
  libpostproc    53.  0.100 / 53.  0.100
Input #0, mpegts, from 'joined.ts':
  Duration: 00:00:07.96, start: 1.441667, bitrate: 3899 kb/s
  Program 1
    Metadata:
      service_name    : Service01
      service_provider: FFmpeg
    Stream #0:0[0x100]: Video: h264 (High) ([27][0][0][0] / 0x001B), yuv420p, 1280x720, 24 fps, 24 tbr, 90k tbn, 180k tbc
    Stream #0:1[0x101](und): Audio: aac ([15][0][0][0] / 0x000F), 44100 Hz, stereo, f

I'm sadly not particularly familiar with FFMPEG, however, generally speaking, a file needs to front load certain meta data to be a streamable file.  If this data is not front loaded, then the download will have to finish prior to the file being playable.  It is sometimes called things like "Progressive Download".  I'm sure someone else can give you a more exact answer for FFMPEG, but hopefully that direction can help you in the interim.

So it turns out after a lot of research that this is the desired behaviour for Apple's AVPlayer component. Basically, my Internet is so slow here where I live, the component waits until the video has fully downloaded before it starts playing. The best and recommended way around this, is to generate alternate streams for the video before trying to play it. Here is documentation on the m3u8 format and HLS streaming guidelines:
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/networkinginternet/conceptual/streamingmediaguide/Introduction/Introduction.html
I followed the above and generated two extra streams from the original: a 200kbps, 400kbps, and playback now starts almost immediately. Your mileage may vary depending on the speed of your Internet connection.
Alternatively, if you don't have to use something like HLS, you can use plain mp4 files. Make sure that they have -faststart enabled if you are processing the file with ffmpeg.
Update: To simplify this for other developers, I have released an SDK that is able to upload your mov or mp4 files to a cloud service and convert the file to an HLS compatible stream. The SDK can be installed via Cocoapods and you can access documentation and the framework here:
https://github.com/Storie/StorieCloudSDK

It's -movflags +faststart for mp4.

Simplest solution is to use -movflags +faststart in your command while transcoding video file. It will move all metadata to the beginning of the file to be played. Hope this helps.


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Should I cut footage into clips whilst I'm logging it?
I'm logging some DV tapes. Currently literally just capturing into Premiere as AVI DV capture format, and writing what is happening and the timecode with pen and paper. I've got the feeling I'm going to have to go back and chop up the footage later. I've got 50 tapes so I want to streamline my workflow early on so I don't leave myself with mammoth tasks that I could have avoided. Plus I'm new to this ...

There is no right or wrong answer here.  I've done both before for projects of your scale.  There are factors that work in favor of both.
For recording whole tapes while you take notes by hand, the pros are:

Least amount of calendar time to capture and edit.
Technically simple.
Requires detailed viewing and review of footage, which may catch issues earlier. (Note, you still CAN review footage in detail for clip logging, but you also don't have to.)

Cons are:

Requires your attention for the entire length of capture to make sure you don't miss anything.
Doesn't allow for as easy use of DV tapes as a backup mechanism. (You can save the start and stop time for the whole tape, but can't import a single clip.)
Requires manual splitting of clips after, however this operation is fairly quick as you have a listing of time codes on which to split.

Conversely, for batch logging of individually logged clips the pros are:

You can fast forward through tapes to get the clip identification done more quickly that watching all the footage in real time during capture.
Allows you to easily go back and double check a missed transition's time without interfering with capture.
Requires only periodic presence during actual capture.
Since meta data for clips is electronic and based on exact time code, DV tapes function as an additional backup.  Footage can be re-captured in a frame accurate manner in the future.
Clips come out as distinct files with well documented meta data.

Cons of individual logging:

Requires more time overall.  You aren't actually capturing while you are identifying the clips and the extra time you spend up front is generally longer than you would have spent splitting clips after, both due to the seek time for tapes as well as the time to enter electronic meta data instead of simply writing it down during playback.
More complicated technically.  You need to actually fill out the meta data for the files to make most effective use of this logging technique and it is more complicated/time consuming than simply writing it down on a pad of paper.

Overall, it really comes down to how organized you want the data to be and how much time you have.  If you need the project done in the minimum amount of calendar time, capture it all and log as you go.  You can alternately do scene breaks as you go as well.
If you more calendar time, are sure of your captured footage, want some additional long term organization and don't want to have to supervise it attentively for 50+ hours, then use clip logging in advance and batch capture the tapes to fill out the clips.
I've moved on to a file based workflow, but when I was shooting DV, I would almost exclusively capture tape at a time for live events (needed fast turn around) and batch log for anything that wasn't a live event (wanted the organization).  I'd also typically still setup a batch log even for the full tape capture, just to maintain the DV backup of the video, even if it then required capturing the entire tape if I needed to recover the footage.

It's been a while since I've had to digitise a tape, but the way you describe it is how I would work. One addition is that if your software supports it you can add markers or subclips while digitising so you can log as you ingest.


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Commercial Movies: Film vs Digital
I was reading about how slowly a lot of motion picture is transitioning to digital from film and the relative advantages & limitations of each medium etc.
I was wondering, are there directors who shoot mixed? Like some scenes in film and others digitally, essentially exploiting the best of each medium depending on what the conditions of the actual shot are?
Or is the logistics of doing such a mix too complicated and not worth it. Is the post-processing flow amenable to mixing film and digital?

Never say never, but in general, the big problem with mixing would be differences in the way the footage looks.  You can color grade a lot of that so it is less obvious, but it will still probably be noticeable to a trained eye.
In most cases, similar types of cameras, if not the same exact model, are used for at least every angle in a scene.  It might change between scenes entirely as that would mask a lot of the transition, but the more consistency the better is the general feeling unless cost or environmental factors prevent it.
It takes a very compelling argument to take on the added complexities of mixing footage from different models of camera.  "I like the way it looks" may be a compelling enough argument for some or in some cases, but it generally isn't.

Not in modern terms, but the BBC did this for years. Many a series was shot multicam video on a sound stage, with any location footage shot 16mm, for portability. The blend was anything but seamless. My take on this was a mock scene from such a series... Woman: "What's it like outdoors?" Man, peering through window: "Hmmm. It's a bit soft and quite grainy."


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What benefit would I get from using Apple Compressor instead of just exporting from Final Cut Pro X?
I have Final Cut Pro X 10.1.4. I usually always use the "share" option to export my video and select whatever format I want to share with. Usually either "Master File" or "YouTube". I also see the option to "Send to Compressor". I researched Apple Compressor and I am trying to figure out if it is worth the money. Does it really export with better options than just what can be done with Final Cut Pro? Also, to convert to different formats I have used Miro Video converter and Handbrake. Does Apple Compressor have a much better system or output than either of these other video converters? Just want to know if it is really worth the $50 USD for Apple Compressor.
Thanks for any input.

The export settings you are using in Final Cut Pro X are preset Compressor settings and the export itself is actually using the Compressor engine (but with no user control). Compressor allows you control over those settings and to save your own custom presets.
For instance, you may want to export an MPEG2 file with a particular bitrate, letterbox 16:9 footage in a 4:3 file, export to Vimeo with custom settings, or any other number of possibilities. If you wanted all of these outputs, you could batch process them. These, and other, codec/compression options can be configured in Compressor and saved as custom presets. Those saved custom presets then appear as available Share options in FCPX.
Compressor allows for encoding without requiring FCPX to be open, or for converting files that don't originate from a FCPX project among other benefits. It also provides a preview window that allows you to compare your source video to processed video before committing.
I still sometimes use Handbrake for h.264 files. It's very fast, clean, and free. In those cases, I will export a ProRes "master file" out of FCPX to bring into Handbrake.
Compressor is not a perfect program, but it is very useful. A lot of it depends on your workflow needs. If you like exporting directly from FCPX, but need custom share options, then Compressor is probably worth it  for you. If you are content with the presets or a workflow with other software, then perhaps not

I use Compressor for final outputs of my films, it does give a better end result due to the compression techniques.
When you use the "Share" option from FCPX it uses the basic Quicktime compression and exporting options which only give a a few export formats to choose, mainly designed to work with apple products.
Compressor does give you a lot more options to export out, if you were going to to build a DVD using a 3rd party app or wanted to export a full quality final master to send to tape or a production house compressor is the beast you need to use.
Adding to this Compressor has the options and technology to use all the available resources in your Mac to chugg away at the video file.
I find it is useful when I do Wedding Films as Ill do all my editing of the ceremony, speeches, first dance, short trailer etc then send them all to Compressor to export in DVD mpeg2, Ac3 audio (I think) Mp4 and final full quality, set it to export and walk away or go to bed, when I come back it is all done and Im ready to burn DVD's, upload to Vimeo or Youtube etc.
Hope this helps

Handbrake is - I use my words carefully - horrible at resolutions higher than 1080p. If you're trying to compress something like 4k, avoid handbrake.

You can also export a widescreen movie that's not exactly 16x9 and you can trim off the black bars so you get the actual size (e.g. 2.53:1, etc).

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


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Library with LOTS of clips: Increasing performance
I work for a small graduate school producing 6-10 short documentaries each year. Most of these projects highlight some aspect of the student experience: classroom, office hours, socializing, internship, family life on our residential campus... So that I'm always ready, I have built up a large inventory of B-roll covering these various aspects of the stuent experience. Most of this content remains current from year to year.
Until recently, I organized all these B-roll clips into one library on a local HDD. This was excellent, because I could search one library for "Dr. Jill Smith" and find all clips titled or tagged "Dr. Jill Smith".
But recently, I have found that Final Cut Pro X 10.0 Events and 10.1 Libraries alike struggle with handling a large number of clips. They are sluggish to load (into RAM?) and frequently give me the "spinning beach ball". In response to this performance issue, I started a new B-roll library for 2014 (also on a local HDD). Its performance is better than my 2011-2013 B-roll library, which I attribute to its having fewer clips (does that sound right?). The result is that now my B-roll is split across multiple libraries. Furthermore, my keyword hierarchy isn't duplicated to my new 2014 B-roll library.
This is a problem for me because I need to be able to search all of my B-roll quickly. I'm considering moving my B-roll content to Lightroom, but evaluating that option, I want to give Final Cut Pro X a chance to be the only media management software I need. (Besides, I love being able to select a clip in one library, press "Q" to add it to my project, and have it consolidated into my project library automatically.)
Is there a way to increase performance of a library with a lot of clips in it? Is there another solution I should consider that would increase my speed of finding the clips I need? Is there a better overall media management strategy I should consider?

Ideally having all your content and project files on a separate harddisk would give you some performance back, this could be a internal drive if your on a Apple Mac Pro or a external drive, USB3, Fire-wire, Thunderbolt etc.
If you dont need to have the libraries open I would close them as they load up the files when you open FCPX.
Other options are to increase your RAM in the Mac, FCPX likes a min of 4gb, I had 6gb in mine and it was running slow, I upped it to 16gb and now it runs so much better, I also made sure I was running the latest FCPX version and I closed some of my libraries down which I didnt need to have open all the time as you can just re-open them when you need to.
I mainly do weddings where I shoot a lot of clips throughout the day 200+ sometimes so it shouldn't have an issue really. I do keep my projects in a very strict order and filing system
Library Name
--Event Name (normally one for RAW files, Audio, Titles etc etc)
--Project Names (normally one for each timeline)
I can have 3/4 edits going at any one time, once I finish one I close it down and archive the whole library removing any render files, optimized media etc to keep the archive size down.
I hope something in this will help


text:
Improving frame/image quality on Handbrake?
I created a .cdr file from a DVD and converted it to an .mp4 with Handbrake. My only issue is Handbrake's default settings create a somewhat grainy picture. The file size went from 1.24Gb to ~100Mb so I assume that explains it.
I'm unfamiliar with the determinants of frame image quality. Here's a screenshot of Handbrake's interface, might someone point me in the direction of the thing to toggle that might improve the .mp4 quality?

Under the video tab, you'll see two options. Video Codec, which is how the video is encoded (h.264 is the standard for .mp4 files), and Quality, which controls the level of video compression that occurs.
It's the Quality slider that you're mostly worried about if you want to keep it an mp4. Drag that slider to the right to improve the quality (this will also increase the file size) or to the left to decrease the file size (this will also decrease the quality). Or if you know exactly the size of file you want, divide the desired file size by the number of seconds and you can input the kb/s that you want the video to be compressed to (smaller file sizes means higher compression and lower quality, higher file sizes equals less compression and higher quality).
In order to test to make sure that you like your quality selection and file size, you can choose a single chapter of the film (if your cdr has that stored) and run that through the encoder and test the quality.
Another thing that is available to choose is the video resolution, but in my experience with handbrake, it's quite temperamental, so I only recommend messing with that if you really need to.


text:
How to lower the volume of the second audio channel with FFMPEG
It's easy to mute one of the audio channels of a video, but I have to lower the second one with some dB.
I have searched in documentation about mapping the channels but I am still confised how to lower the volume of the specific channel. I have only two audio channels in my videos.
Thank you for the help!

After a few hours of searching, I was only able to find this.
I don't know if that's kind of what you are looking for, or at least gives you the info you need to modify the channel volume.
I hope it helps!


text:
How to create exact copy of protected DVD?
First the explanation: I just bought some workout DVDs. My wife and I have a room in our house where we exercise, but my wife also works out with friends she dances with at her studio. I'd like to work out at home, and she'd like to be able to work out at her studio.
We could swap DVDs and try not to do the same workouts on the same days, but it would be easier if I could just copy the DVDs and she could just have those to herself. So my question is, how can I create an exact copy of the DVDs, complete with title menus, etc? I want the experience to be the exact same from the originals to the copies.
I've found a bunch of articles on this through Google, but they all seem to be centered on ripping. Furthermore, the few articles I've found about actually copying never mention whether the entire DVD will be copied (title menus, etc.. everything the same) or just the primary title (like the movie, but not extra features, etc.). I've messed around some with MakeMKV, and it seems to have ripped all the titles ok, but I don't know how to reconstruct them back into the original DVD.
I'm willing to pay for software that can do it. I really just need to know if this is possible, particularly with encrypted, protected DVDs.
Thanks.

Since you don't mind paying for software, why do you mind paying for two legitimate copies, or otherwise 'playing by the rules' by using the DVDs in only one place at a time? It seems to me that asking this question is tantamount to asking 'how can I cheat the author?'. Is this the sort of question we want here?

This site is for Video Production, not consumer consumption concerns.  Additionally, asking how to bypass copy protection on a Q/A site dedicated to Audio/Video Production (aka content producers) probably isn't the best place to ask where to rip off content.  It's a bit like walking in to a police station and asking how to rob a bank.

My mistake: I was under the impression this site was a Q&A site for those that needed help with tasks related to video production; things like copying DVDs (by definition, producing new video). Because this was an honest, fair, and legal concern of mine, I'm surprised and disappointed at the backlash. You're entitled to your opinion, but when it encroaches on a Q&A process that, by all intentions, should be allowed, you've hindered that process and degraded the experience for other users on the site. Anyway, I got my answer despite the criticism, and I'll use that answer for legal purposes.

Since you don't seem to want to make any changes, just rip the whole DVD to an ISO image and then burn that to blank media. I recommend Imgburn.

CSS will prevent a byte for byte copy working without some additional work.  ImgBurn will detect the CSS and refuse to copy the disk.

Because I have a Mac, I used Mac DVD Ripper Pro to rip the DVDs to ISO files, and OSX's built-in Disk Utility to then burn those images to each disc's respective copy.


text:
encoding 4:2:2 in 10-bit with libx264
I believe that libx264 is now capable of doing 10-bit 4:2:2 encodings, but I can't seem to get it to work. I'm using ffmpeg (info below), and I've also tried the x264 encoder directly. I've tried
ffmpeg.exe -i input.mov -c:v libx264 -profile:v high422 -crf 20 -pix_fmt yuv422p output.mp4

and that produces nice 4:2:2 output, but only at 8 bit depth,
[libx264 @ 00000000055a9de0] profile High 4:2:2, level 4.0, 4:2:2 8-bit

and I've tried
ffmpeg.exe -i input.mov -c:v libx264 -profile:v high10 -crf 20 -pix_fmt yuv422p output.mp4

and that gives me the error:
x264 [error]: high10 profile doesn't support 4:2:2
[libx264 @ 00000000051ead60] Error setting profile high10.
[libx264 @ 00000000051ead60] Possible profiles: baseline main high high10 high422 high444

In the x264 --fullhelp documentation I find:
  --profile <string>      Force the limits of an H.264 profile
                              Overrides all settings.
                              [...]
                              - high10:
                                No lossless.
                                Support for bit depth 8-10.
                              - high422:
                                No lossless.
                                Support for bit depth 8-10.
                                Support for 4:2:0/4:2:2 chroma subsampling.
                              - high444:
                                Support for bit depth 8-10.
                                Support for 4:2:0/4:2:2/4:4:4 chroma subsampling.

So it can do 4:2:2 at 10 bit depth, and even 4:4:4 at 10 bits apparently, but there's no indication of how to set the output bit depth. There is an option --input-depth <integer> Specify input bit depth for raw input but nothing for output bit depth.

I found this: http://x264.nl/x264/10bit_02-ateme-why_does_10bit_save_bandwidth.pdf  Apparently you get better compression efficiency (size vs. quality) with 10bit.  I might start using 10bit regularly, if it isn't much slower to encode.

x264 supports both 8-bit and 10-bit outputs, and you don't have to do anything special.
ffmpeg
If using ffmpeg you can see what pixel formats and bit depths are supported by libx264:
$ ffmpeg -h encoder=libx264
  [...]
  Supported pixel formats: yuv420p yuvj420p yuv422p yuvj422p yuv444p yuvj444p nv12 nv16 nv21 yuv420p10le yuv422p10le yuv444p10le nv20le

10-bit pixel formats are: yuv420p10le, yuv422p10le, yuv444p10le.
x264
You can also check x264 for supported bit depths:
$ x264 --help
  [...]
  Output bit depth: 8/10

Previously you had to compile x264 with --bit-depth=10, and then link your ffmpeg to either an 8-bit or 10-bit libx264, but that is now unnecessary. See Unify 8-bit and 10-bit CLI and libraries for more info.

Damn, that makes things complicated. So I'll need two ffmpeg binaries linked against the two x264 libraries. Do you know if there are static builds of the 10bit x264 anywhere?

Find them here you will: http://download.videolan.org/pub/x264/binaries/
If you want to build it yourself there is a hugely long winded process invoving installing mingw, yasm, git and gcc and lots of mucking around here: http://doom10.org/index.php?topic=26.0 But I couldn't get it to work, mainly due to stupid corporate firewall which won't allow git.

Maybe you can get Zeranoe to provide such a build. Sorry, I'm fairly useless when it comes to Windows.

So am I, that's the problem. I've posted a build request, we'll see how it goes.

FWIW these days libx264 is "both" I believe...

edit: I successfully made a 10bit encode of Ducks Take Off.
First way: I built a 10bit x264 binary that statically links libx264.
cp -al x264-git x264-10bit  # instead of changing my normal git checkout
cd x264-10bit
./configure --extra-cflags=-march=native --enable-static --disable-interlaced --bit-depth=10
make -j2
sudo install x264 /usr/local/bin/x264-10bit

mkfifo pipe.y4m
ffmpeg -v verbose -i in -pix_fmt yuv420p10le -strict experimental -f yuv4mpegpipe pipe.y4m
   (open another shell window / tab / screen(1) window):
x264 pipe.y4m --crf 30 --preset ultrafast -o 10bit-420.mkv

(ultrafast and low quality because it's a proof of concept, not a quality test.)
I didn't compile it with swscale.  (It was unhappy about an RGB pix fmt in libavutil or something).  It errors out if the input colorspace doesn't match --output-csp i444, which is actually nice if you don't want to accidentally have x264 downsample the chroma.  It worked fine when I fed it a few frames of yuv444p14le.y4m, producing 10bit output.  (It can truncate bit depth, but not downsample chroma without swscale.)
Second way: use LD_LIBRARY_PATH to select a 10bit libx264.so
You can use the same ffmpeg dynamic-linked binary for everything.
cp -al x264-git x264-10bit  # instead of changing my normal git checkout
cd x264-10bit
./configure  --extra-cflags=-march=native '--libdir=/usr/local/lib/high-bit-depth-codec' '--includedir=/usr/local/lib/high-bit-depth-codec/include' --disable-cli --enable-shared --disable-interlaced --bit-depth=10
make -j2
sudo make install-lib-shared  # this Makefile target depends on install-lib-dev, hence setting --includedir

alias highdepth-ffmpeg='LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib/high-bit-depth-codec ffmpeg'

highdepth-ffmpeg -v verbose -framerate 50 -f image2 \
-pattern_type glob -i ./3_DucksTakeOff_720p50_CgrLevels_SINC_FILTER_SVTdec05_/'*'.sgi \
-pix_fmt yuv420p10le -crf 30 -preset ultrafast \
-sws_flags +accurate_rnd+print_info  \
with_ld_path.420p10.accurate_rnd.mkv
ffmpeg version N-68044-gb9dd809 Copyright (c) 2000-2015 the FFmpeg developers
  built on Jan 14 2015 23:21:08 with gcc 4.8 (Ubuntu 4.8.2-19ubuntu1)
  configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-version3 --enable-nonfree --disable-doc --disable-ffserver --enable-libbluray --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libtheora --enable-libx264 --enable-libx265 --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopus --enable-libwebp --enable-libvpx --disable-outdev=oss --disable-indev=oss --disable-encoder=vorbis --enable-libvorbis --enable-libfdk-aac --disable-encoder=aac --disable-decoder=jpeg2000 --enable-libvidstab
  libavutil      54. 16.100 / 54. 16.100
  libavcodec     56. 20.100 / 56. 20.100
  libavformat    56. 18.101 / 56. 18.101
  libavdevice    56.  4.100 / 56.  4.100
  libavfilter     5.  7.101 /  5.  7.101
  libswscale      3.  1.101 /  3.  1.101
  libswresample   1.  1.100 /  1.  1.100
  libpostproc    53.  3.100 / 53.  3.100
Input #0, image2, from './3_DucksTakeOff_720p50_CgrLevels_SINC_FILTER_SVTdec05_/*.sgi':
  Duration: 00:00:10.00, start: 0.000000, bitrate: N/A
    Stream #0:0: Video: sgi, rgb48be, 1280x720, 50 tbr, 50 tbn, 50 tbc
[graph 0 input from stream 0:0 @ 0x1b6d8c0] w:1280 h:720 pixfmt:rgb48be tb:1/50 fr:50/1 sar:0/1 sws_param:flags=2
[auto-inserted scaler 0 @ 0x1b7dae0] w:iw h:ih flags:'0x41004' interl:0
[format @ 0x1b7e940] auto-inserting filter 'auto-inserted scaler 0' between the filter 'Parsed_null_0' and the filter 'format'
SwScaler: reducing / aligning filtersize 1 -> 4
    Last message repeated 1 times
SwScaler: reducing / aligning filtersize 1 -> 1
SwScaler: reducing / aligning filtersize 9 -> 8
[swscaler @ 0x1b500c0] bicubic scaler, from rgb48be to yuv420p10le using MMXEXT
[swscaler @ 0x1b500c0] 1280x720 -> 1280x720
[auto-inserted scaler 0 @ 0x1b7dae0] w:1280 h:720 fmt:rgb48be sar:0/1 -> w:1280 h:720 fmt:yuv420p10le sar:0/1 flags:0x41004
[libx264 @ 0x1b78da0] using cpu capabilities: MMX2 SSE2Fast SSSE3 Cache64 SlowShuffle
[libx264 @ 0x1b78da0] profile High 10, level 3.2, 4:2:0 10-bit
[libx264 @ 0x1b78da0] 264 - core 144 r2525+2 6a4fca8 - H.264/MPEG-4 AVC codec - Copyleft 2003-2014 - http://www.videolan.org/x264.html - options: cabac=0 ref=1 deblock=0:0:0 analyse=0:0 me=dia subme=0 psy=1 psy_rd=1.00:0.00 mixed_ref=0 me_range=16 chroma_me=1 trellis=0 8x8dct=0 cqm=0 deadzone=21,11 fast_pskip=1 chroma_qp_offset=0 threads=3 lookahead_threads=1 sliced_threads=0 nr=0 decimate=1 interlaced=0 bluray_compat=0 constrained_intra=0 bframes=0 weightp=0 keyint=250 keyint_min=25 scenecut=0 intra_refresh=0 rc=crf mbtree=0 crf=30.0 qcomp=0.60 qpmin=0 qpmax=81 qpstep=4 ip_ratio=1.40 aq=0
Output #0, matroska, to 'with_ld_path.420p10.accurate_rnd.mkv':
  Metadata:
    encoder         : Lavf56.18.101
    Stream #0:0: Video: h264 (libx264) (H264 / 0x34363248), yuv420p10le, 1280x720, q=-1--1, 50 fps, 1k tbn, 50 tbc
    Metadata:
      encoder         : Lavc56.20.100 libx264
Stream mapping:
  Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (sgi (native) -> h264 (libx264))
Press [q] to stop, [?] for help
No more output streams to write to, finishing.e=00:00:09.84 bitrate=12060.2kbits/s
frame=  500 fps= 14 q=-1.0 Lsize=   14714kB time=00:00:10.00 bitrate=12053.5kbits/s
video:14709kB audio:0kB subtitle:0kB other streams:0kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead: 0.031423%
Input file #0 (./3_DucksTakeOff_720p50_CgrLevels_SINC_FILTER_SVTdec05_/*.sgi):
  Input stream #0:0 (video): 500 packets read (2765056000 bytes); 500 frames decoded;
  Total: 500 packets (2765056000 bytes) demuxed
Output file #0 (with_ld_path.420p10.accurate_rnd.mkv):
  Output stream #0:0 (video): 500 frames encoded; 500 packets muxed (15062147 bytes);
  Total: 500 packets (15062147 bytes) muxed
[libx264 @ 0x1b78da0] frame I:2     Avg QP:43.00  size:144760
[libx264 @ 0x1b78da0] frame P:498   Avg QP:49.83  size: 29663
[libx264 @ 0x1b78da0] mb I  I16..4: 100.0%  0.0%  0.0%
[libx264 @ 0x1b78da0] mb P  I16..4:  5.1%  0.0%  0.0%  P16..4: 79.3%  0.0%  0.0%  0.0%  0.0%    skip:15.6%
[libx264 @ 0x1b78da0] coded y,uvDC,uvAC intra: 67.8% 60.5% 41.9% inter: 50.1% 16.3% 2.8%
[libx264 @ 0x1b78da0] i16 v,h,dc,p:  5% 54% 33%  8%
[libx264 @ 0x1b78da0] i8c dc,h,v,p: 53% 39%  6%  3%
[libx264 @ 0x1b78da0] kb/s:12049.24
(same bitrate and stats as with the y4m pipe,
so it behaves the same with the same input data... good.)

I obviously didn't try to see anything visually with those quality settings.  I just wanted it to run fast, and not waste a bunch of disk space since I always end up making lots of output files when trying variations on things.
Not piping the massive y4m data to a separate x264 process made it go 14 fps instead of 12, so a decent speedup for ultrafast.  Slower encodes will dwarf that overhead.
My source is 48bit RGB.  I found that accurate_rnd had no effect on the output mkv. (bit-identical results with no -sws_flags, with -sws_flags +accurate_rnd, and -vf scale=flags=accurate_rnd, except for a few bits in the mkv header, probably the randomized mkv UUID.  Even with -qp 0, so I wasn't losing it to rounding error.  cmp -l f1 f2 | less to compare binary files that might be the same after some initial difference.  Or ssdeep -p.  Maybe accurate_rnd is the default now?)
There is one ffmpeg swscaler flag that matters, if you're letting ffmpeg downsample your chroma:  lanczos instead of the default bicubic.  (I assume lanczos is still regarded as the best choice for high quality?  Haven't read up for a while.)
highdepth-ffmpeg -i in -pix_fmt yuv420p10le ...encode...opts...
-vf scale=flags=lanczos -sws_flags +accurate_rnd+print_info  with_ld_path.420p10.accurate_rnd.lanczos.mkv
Adding +lanczos to -sws_flags doesn't work:
[format @ 0x28e4940] auto-inserting filter 'auto-inserted scaler 0' between the filter 'Parsed_null_0' and the filter 'format'
[swscaler @ 0x28b60c0] Exactly one scaler algorithm must be chosen, got 204
[auto-inserted scaler 0 @ 0x28e3ae0] Failed to configure output pad on auto-inserted scaler 0
Error opening filters!

If you try to feed it input deeper than 10 bits, ffmpeg refuses.
highdepth-ffmpeg ... -pix_fmt yuv444p14le
[graph 0 input from stream 0:0 @ 0x36ec9c0] w:1280 h:720 pixfmt:rgb48be tb:1/50 fr:50/1 sar:0/1 sws_param:flags=2
Incompatible pixel format 'yuv444p14le' for codec 'libx264', auto-selecting format 'yuv444p10le'
[Parsed_scale_0 @ 0x36e2a00] w:1280 h:720 fmt:rgb48be sar:0/1 -> w:1280 h:720 fmt:yuv444p10le sar:0/1 flags:0x200
[libx264 @ 0x3701d80] using cpu capabilities: MMX2 SSE2Fast SSSE3 Cache64 SlowShuffle
[libx264 @ 0x3701d80] profile High 4:4:4 Predictive, level 3.2, 4:4:4 10-bit

Actually, ffmpeg's libx264 driver always insists on feeding x264 exactly the bit-depth it's compiled for.  e.g. with -pix_fmt yuv420p:
Incompatible pixel format 'yuv420p' for codec 'libx264', auto-selecting format 'yuv420p10le'

x264.h says:
/* x264_bit_depth:
 *      Specifies the number of bits per pixel that x264 uses. This is also the
 *      bit depth that x264 encodes in. If this value is > 8, x264 will read
 *      two bytes of input data for each pixel sample, and expect the upper
 *      (16-x264_bit_depth) bits to be zero.
 *      Note: The flag X264_CSP_HIGH_DEPTH must be used to specify the
 *      colorspace depth as well. */
X264_API extern const int x264_bit_depth;

I think internally x264 (the CLI) always has to up-convert pixel formats, the code doesn't have 8bit input, 10bit output versions of every function.  And also, I think the accepting of various input bit depths is just in the x264 CLI, not the library API.  I'm curious what happens when you feed the API input where there are higher bits set...  (ffpeg doesn't allow you to do this without hacking the code, so this isn't something anyone needs to worry about avoiding.)
frame.c:370:  So this is why ffmpeg can't give 8-bit input to libx264
#if HIGH_BIT_DEPTH
    if( !(src->img.i_csp & X264_CSP_HIGH_DEPTH) )
    {
        x264_log( h, X264_LOG_ERROR, "This build of x264 requires high depth input. Rebuild to support 8-bit input.\n" );
        return -1;
    }
#else

With no pix_fmt specified, ffmpeg chooses yuv444p10le when given rgb input.  Or with libx264rgb, it feeds 8bit rgb to functions that are expecting 16bit (10 of which are significant), and segfaults >.<.  I'll go report that upstream...
 highdepth-ffmpeg -v verbose -framerate 50 -f image2 -pattern_type glob -i ./3_DucksTakeOff_720p50_CgrLevels_SINC_FILTER_SVTdec05_/'*'.sgi  -qp 0 -preset ultrafast -sws_flags print_info+accurate_rnd -frames 2  -c:v libx264rgb lossless.rgb.mkv
ffmpeg version N-68044-gb9dd809 Copyright (c) 2000-2015 the FFmpeg developers
  built on Jan 14 2015 23:21:08 with gcc 4.8 (Ubuntu 4.8.2-19ubuntu1)
  configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-version3 --enable-nonfree --disable-doc --disable-ffserver --enable-libbluray --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libtheora --enable-libx264 --enable-libx265 --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopus --enable-libwebp --enable-libvpx --disable-outdev=oss --disable-indev=oss --disable-encoder=vorbis --enable-libvorbis --enable-libfdk-aac --disable-encoder=aac --disable-decoder=jpeg2000 --enable-libvidstab
  libavutil      54. 16.100 / 54. 16.100
  libavcodec     56. 20.100 / 56. 20.100
  libavformat    56. 18.101 / 56. 18.101
  libavdevice    56.  4.100 / 56.  4.100
  libavfilter     5.  7.101 /  5.  7.101
  libswscale      3.  1.101 /  3.  1.101
  libswresample   1.  1.100 /  1.  1.100
  libpostproc    53.  3.100 / 53.  3.100
Input #0, image2, from './3_DucksTakeOff_720p50_CgrLevels_SINC_FILTER_SVTdec05_/*.sgi':
  Duration: 00:00:10.00, start: 0.000000, bitrate: N/A
    Stream #0:0: Video: sgi, rgb48be, 1280x720, 50 tbr, 50 tbn, 50 tbc
[graph 0 input from stream 0:0 @ 0x1eb9660] w:1280 h:720 pixfmt:rgb48be tb:1/50 fr:50/1 sar:0/1 sws_param:flags=2
[auto-inserted scaler 0 @ 0x1eba120] w:iw h:ih flags:'0x41000' interl:0
[format @ 0x1eb94c0] auto-inserting filter 'auto-inserted scaler 0' between the filter 'Parsed_null_0' and the filter 'format'
SwScaler: reducing / aligning filtersize 1 -> 4
    Last message repeated 1 times
SwScaler: reducing / aligning filtersize 1 -> 1
    Last message repeated 1 times
[swscaler @ 0x1eba480] bicubic scaler, from rgb48be to rgb24 using MMXEXT
[swscaler @ 0x1eba480] 1280x720 -> 1280x720
[auto-inserted scaler 0 @ 0x1eba120] w:1280 h:720 fmt:rgb48be sar:0/1 -> w:1280 h:720 fmt:rgb24 sar:0/1 flags:0x41000
No pixel format specified, rgb24 for H.264 encoding chosen.
Use -pix_fmt yuv420p for compatibility with outdated media players.
[libx264rgb @ 0x1ecf020] using cpu capabilities: MMX2 SSE2Fast SSSE3 Cache64 SlowShuffle
[libx264rgb @ 0x1ecf020] profile High 4:4:4 Predictive, level 3.2, 4:4:4 10-bit
[libx264rgb @ 0x1ecf020] 264 - core 144 r2525+2 6a4fca8 - H.264/MPEG-4 AVC codec - Copyleft 2003-2014 - http://www.videolan.org/x264.html - options: cabac=0 ref=1 deblock=0:0:0 analyse=0:0 me=dia subme=0 psy=0 mixed_ref=0 me_range=16 chroma_me=1 trellis=0 8x8dct=0 cqm=0 deadzone=21,11 fast_pskip=0 chroma_qp_offset=0 threads=3 lookahead_threads=1 sliced_threads=0 nr=0 decimate=1 interlaced=0 bluray_compat=0 constrained_intra=0 bframes=0 weightp=0 keyint=250 keyint_min=25 scenecut=0 intra_refresh=0 rc=cqp mbtree=0 qp=0
Output #0, matroska, to 'lossless.rgb.mkv':
  Metadata:
    encoder         : Lavf56.18.101
    Stream #0:0: Video: h264 (libx264rgb) (H264 / 0x34363248), rgb24, 1280x720, q=-1--1, 50 fps, 1k tbn, 50 tbc
    Metadata:
      encoder         : Lavc56.20.100 libx264rgb
Stream mapping:
  Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (sgi (native) -> h264 (libx264rgb))
Press [q] to stop, [?] for help
No more output streams to write to, finishing.
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

I'll report that upstream.
Anyway, it turns out it was pretty darn easy to build myself a dual-bit-depth environment for ffmpeg, or any other program you want to run with high-bit-depth-compiled versions of libx264, libx265, and anything else you want.  (That's why I called it "highdepth", not just "10bit" for a shorter name.)
end of edit: below here are my ramblings without recompiling.  And a good bit about how to cross-compile ffmpeg for win64
Tried this myself, since you didn't try with a cmdline that tried to feed high bit depth input to x264.
ffmpeg pixel format names (ffmpeg -pix_fmts) don't just specify an arrangement, they map to an exact bit arrangement, and thus each format+bit-depth combo has a different name.  I think you were expecting -pix_fmt yuv422p to mean "convert to 422 in the same bit depth as my input".
wikipedia says h.264 supports 8-14 bit depth only with Hi444PP, others are only up to 10bit.  Hi444PP is the only profile that supports predictive lossless coding, which x264 uses for -qp 0 or -crf 0.  edit: AFAICT, x264 still only supports being compiled for 8, 9, or 10bits.
Anyway, here's a bunch of useless output from a command that doesn't work because I didn't recompile my local x264.  (But it should work with recompiled x264.  I might edit this answer if I want to play with it myself.)
ffmpeg -v verbose -framerate 50 -f image2 -pattern_type glob -i ./3_DucksTakeOff_720p50_CgrLevels_SINC_FILTER_SVTdec05_/'*'.sgi -c:v libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p10le -profile high10 yuv-high.mkv
ffmpeg version N-68044-gb9dd809 Copyright (c) 2000-2015 the FFmpeg developers
  built on Jan 14 2015 23:21:08 with gcc 4.8 (Ubuntu 4.8.2-19ubuntu1)
  configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-version3 --enable-nonfree --disable-doc --disable-ffserver --enable-libbluray --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libtheora --enable-libx264 --enable-libx265 --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopus --enable-libwebp --enable-libvpx --disable-outdev=oss --disable-indev=oss --disable-encoder=vorbis --enable-libvorbis --enable-libfdk-aac --disable-encoder=aac --disable-decoder=jpeg2000 --enable-libvidstab
  libavutil      54. 16.100 / 54. 16.100
  libavcodec     56. 20.100 / 56. 20.100
  libavformat    56. 18.101 / 56. 18.101
  libavdevice    56.  4.100 / 56.  4.100
  libavfilter     5.  7.101 /  5.  7.101
  libswscale      3.  1.101 /  3.  1.101
  libswresample   1.  1.100 /  1.  1.100
  libpostproc    53.  3.100 / 53.  3.100
Input #0, image2, from './3_DucksTakeOff_720p50_CgrLevels_SINC_FILTER_SVTdec05_/*.sgi':
  Duration: 00:00:10.00, start: 0.000000, bitrate: N/A
    Stream #0:0: Video: sgi, rgb48be, 1280x720, 50 tbr, 50 tbn, 50 tbc
Please use -profile:a or -profile:v, -profile is ambiguous
File 'yuv-high.mkv' already exists. Overwrite ? [y/N] y
[graph 0 input from stream 0:0 @ 0x24797e0] w:1280 h:720 pixfmt:rgb48be tb:1/50 fr:50/1 sar:0/1 sws_param:flags=2
Incompatible pixel format 'yuv420p10le' for codec 'libx264', auto-selecting format 'yuv420p'
[auto-inserted scaler 0 @ 0x24938c0] w:iw h:ih flags:'0x4' interl:0
[format @ 0x2494680] auto-inserting filter 'auto-inserted scaler 0' between the filter 'Parsed_null_0' and the filter 'format'
[auto-inserted scaler 0 @ 0x24938c0] w:1280 h:720 fmt:rgb48be sar:0/1 -> w:1280 h:720 fmt:yuv420p sar:0/1 flags:0x4
[libx264 @ 0x248eda0] using cpu capabilities: MMX2 SSE2Fast SSSE3 Cache64 SlowShuffle
[libx264 @ 0x248eda0] profile High, level 3.2
[libx264 @ 0x248eda0] 264 - core 144 r2525+2 6a4fca8 - H.264/MPEG-4 AVC codec - Copyleft 2003-2014 - http://www.videolan.org/x264.html - options: cabac=1 ref=3 deblock=1:0:0 analyse=0x3:0x113 me=hex subme=7 psy=1 psy_rd=1.00:0.00 mixed_ref=1 me_range=16 chroma_me=1 trellis=1 8x8dct=1 cqm=0 deadzone=21,11 fast_pskip=1 chroma_qp_offset=-2 threads=3 lookahead_threads=1 sliced_threads=0 nr=0 decimate=1 interlaced=0 bluray_compat=0 constrained_intra=0 bframes=3 b_pyramid=2 b_adapt=1 b_bias=0 direct=1 weightb=1 open_gop=0 weightp=2 keyint=250 keyint_min=25 scenecut=40 intra_refresh=0 rc_lookahead=40 rc=crf mbtree=1 crf=23.0 qcomp=0.60 qpmin=0 qpmax=69 qpstep=4 ip_ratio=1.40 aq=1:1.00
Output #0, matroska, to 'yuv-high.mkv':
  Metadata:
    encoder         : Lavf56.18.101
    Stream #0:0: Video: h264 (libx264) (H264 / 0x34363248), yuv420p, 1280x720, q=-1--1, 50 fps, 1k tbn, 50 tbc
    Metadata:
      encoder         : Lavc56.20.100 libx264
Stream mapping:
  Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (sgi (native) -> h264 (libx264))
Press [q] to stop, [?] for help
No more output streams to write to, finishing.e=00:00:09.02 bitrate=18034.6kbits/s
frame=  500 fps=6.6 q=-1.0 Lsize=   21568kB time=00:00:09.96 bitrate=17739.6kbits/s
video:21564kB audio:0kB subtitle:0kB other streams:0kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead: 0.020773%
Input file #0 (./3_DucksTakeOff_720p50_CgrLevels_SINC_FILTER_SVTdec05_/*.sgi):
  Input stream #0:0 (video): 500 packets read (2765056000 bytes); 500 frames decoded;
  Total: 500 packets (2765056000 bytes) demuxed
Output file #0 (yuv-high.mkv):
  Output stream #0:0 (video): 500 frames encoded; 500 packets muxed (22081186 bytes);
  Total: 500 packets (22081186 bytes) muxed
[libx264 @ 0x248eda0] frame I:2     Avg QP:29.33  size:131874
[libx264 @ 0x248eda0] frame P:257   Avg QP:31.07  size: 75444
[libx264 @ 0x248eda0] frame B:241   Avg QP:33.54  size: 10073
[libx264 @ 0x248eda0] consecutive B-frames:  3.6% 96.4%  0.0%  0.0%
[libx264 @ 0x248eda0] mb I  I16..4:  0.1% 71.9% 28.0%
[libx264 @ 0x248eda0] mb P  I16..4:  0.0%  4.5%  1.1%  P16..4: 36.1% 37.6% 19.6%  0.0%  0.0%    skip: 1.0%
[libx264 @ 0x248eda0] mb B  I16..4:  0.0%  0.2%  0.1%  B16..8: 34.3%  2.6%  1.1%  direct: 9.6%  skip:52.2%  L0: 6.2% L1:46.6% BI:47.2%
[libx264 @ 0x248eda0] 8x8 transform intra:78.4% inter:60.4%
[libx264 @ 0x248eda0] coded y,uvDC,uvAC intra: 98.3% 95.3% 85.9% inter: 51.7% 34.8% 12.8%
[libx264 @ 0x248eda0] i16 v,h,dc,p:  5% 77%  4% 14%
[libx264 @ 0x248eda0] i8 v,h,dc,ddl,ddr,vr,hd,vl,hu:  2% 43% 11%  3%  5%  2% 16%  2% 16%
[libx264 @ 0x248eda0] i4 v,h,dc,ddl,ddr,vr,hd,vl,hu:  3% 40%  9%  4%  6%  3% 17%  2% 16%
[libx264 @ 0x248eda0] i8c dc,h,v,p: 47% 40%  6%  7%
[libx264 @ 0x248eda0] Weighted P-Frames: Y:1.2% UV:0.4%
[libx264 @ 0x248eda0] ref P L0: 70.9% 26.5%  1.8%  0.7%  0.0%
[libx264 @ 0x248eda0] ref B L0: 99.5%  0.5%
[libx264 @ 0x248eda0] kb/s:17664.40

$ x264 --fullhelp | less
...
Output bit depth: 8 (configured at compile time)

Note the Incompatible pixel format 'yuv420p10le' for codec 'libx264', auto-selecting format 'yuv420p' line.
Probably I didn't need -profile, and with a high-bit-depth x264, it would just work.  (and potentially pick 444 10bit, which ffmpeg calls yuva444p10le.)  I think high bit depth x264 could accept yuv444p14le, but would still only produce 10bit h.264.  The cmdline x264 --fullhelp is pretty explicit about output bit depth from 8 to 10, not higher.  Weird that -profile high10 is just silently ignored by 8bit x264.
Internally, x264 compiled for high bit depth uses 16bpp for storing any 10bit data, so it probably does motion search and so on with 16bit values.  And might DCT higher 16bit rather than 10bit, unless there's speed to be gained from ignoring 6 bits.  This could produce slightly different DCT coefficients than if you rounded down to 10bit before DCT.  (So you potentially get different output from converting down to 10bit before feeding to x264, vs. giving it 12, 14, or 16bit.)  I should prob. look at the code or try it before making stuff up, though.  Don't trust this paragraph. :P
(edit: ffmpeg won't feed x264-10bit anything more than 10bits per component.  It will use swscale to reduce the bit depth itself.)
I wonder how hard it would be to patch x264 and x265 to use different names for global variables and API functions, when compiled for high-bit-depth.  Then you could build both versions at once, and have ffmpeg linked against both of them.  The ffmpeg libx264 and libx264rgb wrappers could take care of calling the appropriate version of the api depending on the input stream.  (Otherwise you'd need -c:v libx264-deep or libx264rgb-deep, for a total of 4 different x264 "codecs" in ffmpeg.)
How to cross compile ffmpeg for windows
edit: For windows, I don't think there's anything as convenient as LD_LIBRARY_PATH for a libx264 DLL, so your best bet is still to build a high-bit-depth static binary, and another one for normal use.  High-depth libx264 CAN'T output normal depth h.264 at all.  Not just a speed penalty, it just can't.
The easiest way to compile your own ffmpeg (static binary) for windows is with https://github.com/rdp/ffmpeg-windows-build-helpers.  git clone the repo on a Linux machine (or maybe another system with a working gcc, like OS X?), then run
./cross_compile_ffmpeg.sh --high-bitdepth=y --disable-nonfree=n --build-choice=win64
This took about 8 hours for the first run, since it built mingw-cross-compile GCC from source, along with everything else.  (gcc defaults to rebuilding itself several times to bootstrap, in case you were originally compiling it with a bad compiler.)
You can update the build script with git pull, and re-running it will pull the latest git updates for ffmpeg, x264, x265, and maybe some of the other projects it compiles from source.  (For most it just downloads tarballs.)
My Linux desktop is showing its age.  I have a wintendo I mostly use for games.  Since I started messing around with video encoding, I find its quad-core Sandybridge pretty useful for that, too, esp. for x265.  Probably some of x265's functions only have asm versions for AVX/SSE4, so it's falling back to C on my SSSE3 Linux machine (Conroe).  That or it's more noticable at 1fps...

Does stackexchange notify people when I make edits?  posting a comment in case it doesn't.

this is a lot simpler on OS X, where dynamic linking is used. Simply brew reinstall x264 --with-10-bit and you are done, ffmpeg will use the new x264 flavor :)

@SargeBorsch: the point of this answer was to have both flavours installed AT THE SAME TIME, so you can compare 8bit and 10bit without reinstalling the library.  OS X dynamic linking works pretty much the same as Linux's, where you could similarly replace your libx264 install with the other flavour if you wanted.

@PeterCordes hmm, my bad. You are right

I downloaded the ffmpeg from the link
https://sourceforge.net/projects/ffmpeg-hi/?source=typ_redirect
And entered the below command to create 4:2:2 10bit h.264 file:
ffmpeg-hi10-heaac.exe -i "im.mp4" -c:v libx264 -pix_fmt yuv422p10le yuv-high-.ts


text:
What does the information on DSLR lenses mean in terms of filmmaking?
What does the information on DSLR lenses such as the mm range and the f/stop mean in terms of filmmaking, specifically relating to depth-of-field.  Lenses are the only aspect of filmmaking I don't understand and I want to be able to make informed decisions about them.

They mean the exact same thing they do in the photography context.  The mm measurement is the focal length.  It determines the angle of view the lens produces (ie, how "zoomed in" it appears.)  Lenses with a range are zoom lenses where the angle of view can be adjusted.  "Zoom" is otherwise not a meaningful thing.  Optically, zoom just means you can change the focal length.  The x numbers associated with consumer zoom lenses are meaningless as they just describe the relationship between the smallest and largest focal length, not how much magnification a lens provides.
f/ numbers are measurements of how far the aperture of the lens can open.  The smaller the number, the more light the lens lets in and the smaller the depth of field is.  If there is a range of f/ numbers, it means that the lens' maximum aperture (the smallest number it can go to) changes over the focal length range of the lens.  Generally, the largest aperture (smallest f/ number) will be at the wide end (the smallest mm number) and the smallest (largest f/ number) will be at the telephoto end of the lens (largest mm number).  This can actually be a desirable feature to have on lenses used for video as it allows for smooth lighting and depth of field adjustments on the fly without needing to use third party firmwares to make smooth adjustments from the camera.
On many modern lenses, the f/ selection is done on the camera and the aperture is electronically adjusted.  There are, however, lenses that include manual aperture rings that include both notched and unnotched aperture values (ie, they either move freely between different aperture values for smooth adjustments to aperture (sometimes called iris in video) or to be able to precisely select specific values.
Note that most photographic zoom lenses will not exactly hold focus as you zoom (parafocal), so that is also something to be aware of when zooming optically with a photographic lens.  This is also a big part of why cinema lenses (which are parafocal) cost so much more than similar quality photographic lenses.  You can do just fine using a good photographic lens that is nearly parafocal, you just need to remember to make focus adjustments along with your zooms.

I have two follow-up questions. First, what is the difference between focal length and zoom?  Secondly, on most lenses there is two controls, one for zoom and one for focus.  How would you control the f/stop, is it an internal camera setting or am I missing something on the lens?

Updated my answer to reflect those additional elements of the question.

@AJ Henderson: Naive question: As a point-n-shoot user I think of zoom & focus as unified because I don't have a seperate "knob" to do each. i.e. Usually I zoom & the camera autofocuses. On  DSLR's I've mostly used the ring to zoom & let the camera autofocus. But when you write "you just need to remember to make focus adjustments along with your zooms" I'm wondering, do DSLR's come with independent, manual adjustments of zoom & focus?

@curious_cat - yes, there is one ring for focus and another for zoom.  Autofocus doesn't work when shooting video on a DSLR unless it has a hybrid sensor with PDAF capability on the imaging sensor.


text:
Is there a video type for vector animation?
Is there a vector-based video type, preferably open-source, so that an animated clip could be produced using "rules" instead of pixel-compression?
This would mean lossless resolution-independent video. If it does exist - a link to the specifications would be helpful.

Have a look at Vectorly Video Vectorization.

There was one, but it fell in to disuse and isn't used very often anymore, largely because of the lack of mobile support, but also due to security issues it created.  It was called Flash.

:) So that's why it's disabled on my computer! Anyway, thanks. I didn't know that it's vector-based. I assume the video codec (if that's the right term in this case) is flv. Correct?

OK. I now see it's SWF. Knowing about Flash being vector-based, I now found there are more, such as EVA and XARA. Thanks.

It is also worth pointing out I was being semi-sarcastic and semi-serious in my response.  It really isn't a video format.  Video, pretty much by definition, is raster, however there are playable animation formats, of which Shockwave Flash (now known as Flash) is the most commonly used.  As you determined, Flash Video is a different thing and is a form of raster video designed to be embedded within a Flash animation (which has actually grown to have a full scripting system allowed inside it's execution.)

You can still embed Flash animations in HTML5 using Ruffle.

The University of Bath released a paper demonstrating a vector-based video codec a couple of years ago, with a press release asking "is the pixel about to die?". Strangely since then the pixel hasn't died, in fact there are even more of them around than there used to be.
You could argue that most video codecs do actually use vectors: DCT (or similar), - which is used in pretty much every video codec around - is based on the idea that you can represent any signal perfectly as the sum of several cosine waves, or in other words as a bunch of vectors added together.
But that doesn't mean you can scale a standard definition DV movie up to 4K without any loss of sharpness. The reason for this is that even though a DCT encoded image is essentially a bunch of mathematical functions, and is therefore resolution independant, the signal that they encode is limited in bandwidth to the original data that was captured; the camera is a low-pass filter, filtering out any detail finer than the resolution of the sensor (it's probably more precise to say any detail finer than the Nyquist limit of the sensor ~= 1/2 the resolution). In other words, no codec can encode information that wasn't there in the first place.
So even the University of Bath's codec can't do that thing they do in movies where you can infinitely enhance a low res, out-of-focus security camera shot until it looks like it came out of a Hasselblad.
Flash animation as AJ Henderson mentions is a pure vector based format, but it is only for content that was created as vectors, and not to be confused with Flash video (flv container) which is a raster format where the pixels are encoded with Sorenson Spark or VP6 or good ol' h.264 (which uses DCT).
EDIT Worth updating this answer with info about Lottie, which is software that makes it easy to use HTML5 vector animation. It's basically a modern replacement for flash. You can use After Effects for example to create animations directly for the web, without rendering. This is not a codec as such, it doesnt encode a raster (pixel based) image like you'd get out of a camera, that's still the job for codecs like h.264 etc.

Thanks. Since I'm referring to creating animation using vectors, it would be a perfect fit, though, as you've stated, it might not be a replacement for other codecs for video captured by a camera. Now I'm wondering if it's practical to write my own code to transform a set of coordinates (etc.) into a video. As opposed to using 3rd party software.

Sounds like you should learn how to use the HTML5 canvas element.

That's a pretty good point about the fact that most motion estimation really is kind of vector based, though not really in the context the OP is referring to since it can't scale indefinitely.  That stuff from Bath is pretty impressive though.  Very nice edge detection and pathing from what I could tell from the sample.

Not just motion estimation. DCT is intra frame, it's used in lots of codecs, even the JPEG image codec.

SVG supports animation using JavaScript and the animate element. That means using a browser or embeddable renderer like WebKit to render it, though.
Older games often used their own vector animation formats. You might look into the asset formats supported by open source implementations of old game engines like ScummVM and Sarien. There are some asset extractors and editors, but I'm not sure if there are any standalone viewers, so you might have to extract the animation code yourself if you were to go this route.
May I ask what your end goal is? I'm into vector graphics for the same reason I like MODs and chip music; the more recent formats are huge and CPU hungry, and frankly it feels like cheating compared to what could be accomplished on a PC with 640k of RAM or even a Commodore 64.

A link from this answer to "Is there a way to convert SWF into SVG format?" at Stack Overflow may be useful in the future Macromedia Flash (SWF) to SVG Converter. "Animations are planned to be implemented in the next versions."

Here is some research about this topic:
Resolution Independent 2D Cartoon Video Conversion
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305390110_Resolution_Independent_2D_Cartoon_Video_Conversion
Video Vectorization via Tetrahedral Remeshing
http://wangchuan.github.io/archive/research/videovec/paper.pdf
Video Codec for Classical Cartoon Animations with Hardware Accelerated Playback
http://dcgi.felk.cvut.cz/publications/2005/sykora-isvc-vccca
I remember reading this last one when I was watching many cartoons and anime online a few years ago. The video resolution you get with many streaming portals, 480p (or even 720p), just doesn't do justice to these nice outline drawings when viewed on full HD/4k displays.
IIRC, the authors of said paper even provided downloads of example video files and their player back then (as a proof of concept), but I cannot find them now.
One problem with rule/computation-based animations (vector graphics;real-time rendered games, flash...) is that it's hard to predict whether the machine playing the video will be able to render the things quickly enough. But you can also have this performance problem with the usual video codecs. Some cheap laptops I owned could not decode full hd/4k videos at the speed necessary for playback...
Still, with vector/computation-based graphics, the problem is worse: There is potentially no limit to the computation power you might need to render a frame. Think about it: CGI movies could be distributed as just the code and assets used to produce them and your machine could render them at any framerate and resolution. The problem is that these movies where not designed for this. Computing a frame might take hours on your machine, not to mention that you probably don't even have enough harddisk space to store all the assets at full resolution which their renderfarm uses.
Computers of today might be able to do Toy Story in real-time though. Also, if you have a high-end gaming rig, the real-time ingame graphics cutscenes are of course also a type of resolution independent video.

Thanks, me from the past, for writing this down, I thought I would never find Video Codec for Classical Cartoon Animations with Hardware Accelerated Playback http://dcgi.felk.cvut.cz/publications/2005/sykora-isvc-vccca again...

Good point about real-time rendering. I wonder if anyone is creating films with tools like Unity and delivering them as executables.

There is a vector based codec that I've been using - but it can't live outside of editing.
Flash exports an swf file format that maintains the motion vector information when applied in After Effects (don't know if it works in Premier.  DOES NOT work in Final Cut).  When these files are imported into AE, they maintain their resolution regardless of scale or zoom.  All other features applicable to shape layers are applicable to swfs.
Almost every other visual application does not recognize the swf format, so it's uses are very limited.  But the codec DOES exist.

GameMaker studio supports SWF/Vector art and animation.  but of course that is for video games.  But I'm sure with how gamemaker works you could  make your own bootable videos with it.


text:
Wavy video export in Premiere Pro
I've exported a video within Premiere Pro & certain areas of the video produce wavy lines or it comes out distorted. What could be the cause of this and how can this be fixed?
See below for an example.
Exported Video:

Same clip within Premiere Pro:

Those are interlacing problems it looks like. In the editor, it displays 'deinterlaced' previews so you won't notice this in the editor. In the clip, select "Field options" and then "Always deinterlace" then render your video again, it should be fine then.


text:
How to add "two" transitions between clips in Premiere?
I am very new to this video editing, so sorry,...
I actually want a transition that takes longer to undip from black than to dip to black.
I wanted to add two transitions, one at the end of the first clip and have the transition stop at 50% and then another one at the beginning of the next and have it start at 50% and then adjust the time the transitions take.
It turns out one can only have one transition between clips. Which makes sense, but does not explain how I should proceed.

I am unclear on what you are asking. So you have 2 clips on your timeline and you want to have clip 1 dissolve but only halfway? That's your opacity. So just click on your clip in the timeline (next to the clip name I believe there's a twirly) and you should be able to select motion, or opacity. Click opacity. Then adjust it with keyframes.
Then go to your second clip and start your first keyframe at 50% and then further along the timeline take it back to 100% with another keyframe?
I hope that helps.

Just try googling "Premiere adjusting opacity" there's gotta be at least one youtube video on it. It's not hard, I just haven't ever tried explaining it in a forum.

Jeremy's opacity method will work, but if you want to do it with transitions, just make a gap between the adjacent clips, apply the transitions to each clip separately and then trim them back together.


text:
D5200 Color levels change through video
Im shooting video using nikon D5200, just a man speaking in a green background.
The problem is that at the beginning of video the man is more "blue-ish" and as video progresses he becomes more "red-ish".
I noticed this at post-processing while trying to fix color levels.
What happened? Is this a constant auto-balance of colors from the camera while shooting video? How can i disable this and have the same color balance through all the video?

Don't use auto white balance and use manual exposure.
Auto white balance will guess at what is white and may shift while you are running video on some cameras (which makes sense since often people may move from one room to another while shooting or lighting conditions could change.
Manual exposure will preserve luminosity.  Auto exposure shouldn't change color temperature (which is what you are noticing) however it will change how bright things are and that can be just as much of an issue for trying to get accurate green screen footage.

For me it looks like you use Auto whitebalance. Try to set the whitebalance to one particular value depend of the light you shoot.


text:
Multiple Videos On Screen
I'm trying to get a whole bunch of videos on screen, playing at one time. The idea would be to slowly pan into the central video. Any ideas how this can be achieved? I'm using Sony Vegas Pro 9. I've attached these two pictures to illustrate what I'm trying to achieve.

Tim

Use Track Motion to create video wall - 9 tracks, each clip on its own track. There are tools that can help you to do it (I use Pan/Crop Assistant from Vegasaur toolkit).
Add another track (parent track) and make these 9 tracks composing childs of this parent track.
Use Parent Motion to create pan/zoom animation.
Read in the Help about Track Motion...

Im would guess theres a plugin for SV that would do this but I would do the following which might be a bit long winded and not correct but it will do the job.
Assuming your using HD 1920 x 1080
Get all 9 videos each on a different timeline (stacked one above the other)
Resize them all to the same size
width = (1920 / 3 = 640 - 10px for the 2 borders)
height = (1080 / 3 = 360 - 10px for the 2 borders)
Then position the 3 central videos starting from the middle one and working up and down then left and right
Otherwise what has just sprung into my head
using something like photoshop make a quick template (ie the image above to mate the output size assuming 1920 x 1080
drop this on a timeline
shrink all the videos to fit the boxes
remove template from timeline


text:
Way to share HD multi-cam long media files to preview edits
I'm working with a team, we make some review videos for automobile/cars. There are in-car shots with 3 way multi-cam scenario, sometimes 1 out-car shot may come.
We have 3 producers. There is no strong work of compositing right now, just video editing. However editing is very complicated, sometimes there may be 10 cuts over 10 secs. It should also be managed by all producers, however the media is usually over 40 GBs. It is impossible to transfer this data via internet atm, I lastly found out proxy is intuitive for that kind of work.
We need to figure out the best (at least, optimal) way with performance and time aspects, what do you prefer? Only one may render the final work, we have no issue with that. But there should be a way to preview our work (as a project file) to the director.
Some tech stuff:
Videos are basically 2 hours before editing and the final video comes like 30 mins, not more than 45 mins. There are two 1080p cameras and one 720p camera recording at 24.97, 60 fps and 29.97 fps, respectively. Audio is recorded at 16-bit 44100 Hz PCM mono. The audio channels of videos are deleted right after sync.

It sounds like your major hurdle is transferring the data, correct?  As long as all of your people are using the same software and have copies of the camera originals, you should just be able to email small .xml .edl or project files to communicate edits with your partners.  To get a copy of the originals in everyone's hands, consider physically mailing hard drives.  That, or web hosts like DropBox.

Sound like you nailed it there, I work on projects from my Mac Pro and MacBookPro.
I have all mead copied on both devices and backed up on a Extenral HDD

Why are you jumbling your frame rates?  That's just asking for trouble.

With the other problems you have in your current pipeline, I would just transcode your source files to a low quality, low res intermediate proxy.  Have other editors work off the low quality, small size videos and simply replace the proxy in the final render.
There will be some minor losses in this process due to things like color changes and such from the compression on the proxies, but a final color grading pass will counteract that largely and either way, the problems you are going to get from the various frame rates and resolutions far overshadow the very minor issues you'll get from using the low quality proxies.

Sound like you nailed it there, I work on projects from my Mac Pro and MacBookPro.
I have all mead copied on both devices and backed up on a Extenral HDD
Using FCPX I start the edit on one machine and then DropBox or GoogleDrive the project file (As all the media is kept separate from the project)
I then can just drop it back into  the folder and it will be up to date.
I only work like this as I do most of my editing at home but use my MBP while on lunches at work etc
I would jsut pop all the media on a Ext USB HDD and mail the original files and project folder structure as long as this all stays the same it should be effort less, otherwise using some proxy files using a standard file and folder structure so it is all kept to this standard.
all my project use the same structure which means I always know where my files are and if anything happens I know where to look straight away


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Editing software with a good textbook (Windows)
What are the leading editing tools available that also have good textbooks for them? I'd like to learn making videos based on Fraps footage: manage multiple audio tracks, cut/move pieces of audio, possibly record and insert pieces of audio right on the spot, add text on top of video, add fade in/out effects between pieces of video, etc.
I imagine there are several such products, so I'll try to be more specific: it should be modern, easy to use, not buggy, able to use all CPU cores for the rendering and have good tutorial to learn all its stuff.
Ideas?
Thanks.

This is a very broad question, can you be a bit more specific, do you need to buy hardware (PC etc), most of what you described can be done with just about all modern NLE's does it need to be Free, paid for, but you can look into the major ones, Adobe Premier Pro, Lightworks, Sony Vegas, Davinci resolve is quite good right now.

@AJHenderson I think you have https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/uk/products/davinciresolve/edit version 11 is a full NLE with Grading but it does have quite high system specs but it will be my main edit system for short films but quick edits are FCPX for me

@AdamMannPro - very intriguing.  More reason for me to sit down with Resolve Lite and play I suppose.  That's pretty sweet.  I <3 BlackMagic Design.

@AJHenderson I was surprised when I first heard about it as well, I am annoyed tho as you need a MBP with retina display or you loose sections of the NLE which is rubbish, so I will only be using it on projects where I will be on my MP only for everything else FCPX as it works on both for now

@AdamMannPro paid for is ok if it's affordable, I just need it for a hobby.

Free: Lightworks, Davince Resolve 11, Paid: Adobe Premier Pro or Elements, Sony vegas
but as stated above, it is more about the skill rather than the software I think @AJHenderson covered it pretty well

Video editing software is a tool to do video editing.  Any decent textbook should teach video editing, not video editing software.
Conversely if you know how to edit, most NLEs (the technical term for video editing software) should be pretty intuitive.  I can sit down at any decent NLE you put in front of me and start editing without a manual, but I've been editing for 15+ years.
In terms of NLE software with good documentation, Premiere has very nice documentation and is a very solid platform, but it also isn't the cheapest option out there.
Overall, I would recommend not focusing on the NLE software and more on how to edit though.

Accepting because it's from someone with 15+ years experience with a straight software recommendation. Thanks. Their CC subscription plan looks good to me.

@YuriUshakov - as a note, while I appreciate the accept, you don't need to accept my answer right away just because I'm experienced.  Others may still write fantastic answers that are more deserving of the accept than mine.  In fact, I was hoping someone might respond with some examples of good learning resources that teach editing but also guide through a particular NLE (non-linear editor is what that stands for by the way).  The down side to having done editing at various levels for 15 years is that most of the resources I know of for learning are a bit dated at this point.


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Canon T3i with Blackmagic Design Intensity to record plays?
My school's drama department wants to record their shows. As the school only has really old cameras, the recordings look like garbage. I have a Canon T3i but the recordings stop at 30 minutes. This is where the Blackmagic Design Intensity products come in. The Intensity products can record from an HDMI input. So, in theory, I can connect my T3i's HDMI out to this and record the show on the computer. My only concern is the time. Our shows are about 2 hours. Would this cause the camera to overheat? Would this even work at all?

Are you sure it doesn't still cut off after 30 mins?  We've got a couple Canon 5d3s, and I'm pretty sure they cut off regardless.  You might want to look into "magic lantern".  It's a firmware hack that, among other things, circumvents this limitation in some Canon cameras.  No idea if it works with the T3i, though.

Just checked.  ML does support T3i.  You should check it out.  But be aware that it probably voids your product warranties and could potentially damage your camera.  I haven't had any problems with it, though.  http://www.magiclantern.fm

Oh one other thing.  I've heard that the 30 min restriction has less to do with hardware limitations and more to do with the European Union imposing extra taxes on cameras classified as "video cameras"  ie, cameras that shoot more than 30 mins of video at a time.  I've also heard that this is just a rumor, so take it with a grain of salt.

@JasonConrad, the limitation of 30 minutes is not only for EU but for USA too. This is based on classification of still and videocameras. But my concern about the OP question is heat of the sensor. 2 hours is too much for camera like this

I know the limitation exists in US and EU.  Just saying that I heard a rumor that it was because manufacturer would have to pay extra taxes in the EU.  Whatever the reason behind the crippleware, Magic Lantern does circumvent it.  Not sure that it's a good idea, but I know that you can do it.  That's why I'm not posting this as an answer, and why I provided the caution earlier.  Maybe someone who knows more about it will chime in?

@JasonConrad, my personal concern is heat. Even ML will not make sensor colder. And general recommendations for still cameras is to avoid shoots longer than 5 or 10 minutes

Agreed.  Just in case I didn't make it clear before:   ATTENTION Magic Lantern PROBABLY voids your warranty and could turn your camera into a FLAMING BRICK.

I've been using Magic Lantern for a while. I've seen an option to automatically restart the recording when it stops it self but not to get around the 30 minute limit. The heat is really an issue. Would a Panasonic GH3 work in this setup? Indy Mogul did a live stream with it a while back.

The problem is that the HDMI output on your T3i is not clean.  You would still have all the UI from the camera interface placed on it.  Higher end cameras (like the 5D mark iii) and some other makes have a clean output option, but I don't believe the T3i does.
You can use the third party MagicLantern firmware to force the interface clean, but at that point you can also have it automatically start a second recording after the first ends and bypass the 30 minute limit altogether.
As far as sensor overheating, it really depends on the camera model and the temperature in the environment you are shooting and how fast it dissipates waste heat.  MagicLantern generally displays an indicator of the temperature of the sensor with some color coding as to how hot it actually is.  You could try using ML and see how your camera handles it, but it may very well run too hot when trying to do two hours at a time.  You won't know for sure until you try though.
As others have noted, ML may or may not void your warantee.  It technically isn't a full third party firmware, but rather just runs on top of the underlying OS that is built in, but it can tweak settings that aren't normally tweaked internally.  There are plenty of cases of people getting warranty replacements on cameras that had had ML installed, but you should be aware that it is not a completely risk free process and in rare cases ML has caused cameras to become unresponsive (or even brick in exceptionally rare cases).


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Why does Adobe Premiere Pro modify original footage/asset files (e.g. mov)? (CS6)
Background:

A colleague had given me a large 33Gb .mov for use in a project, I
put this file on a backup drive.
I made an identical copy of this 33Gb .mov file and placed it in a folder that I'd use to work on a Premiere Pro Project.
I ran Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 and dragged in the 33Gb .mov file into the Sequence (imported it)
Premiere Pro CS6 started conforming the file.
After it had finished, I noticed that
it's Modified Date was just now i.e different to the Modified Date
on the original copy of the file on the backup drive (see step 1)
I ran a BeyondCompare check between the .mov file on the backup drive
(see step 1) and the one that the Premiere Pro project was using
(step 2, 3) and Beyond Compare reported they were different.

I had initially thought it was unrelated file corruption of some kind, but I have checked this several times and got the same outcome, so it's definitely Premiere Pro deliberately modifying the file.
So I am puzzled: these are supposed to be the same file.
Why would there be a need for Adobe Premiere Pro to modify the footage?
What does it do to the file?
Would it not be better to create a separate file if necessary?
I can accept this if that's how it works and it's good to know that it was Premiere Pro deliberately modifying the files and not corruption (so my hardware ought to be healthy). But it makes more sense to me if Premiere Pro made separate modified copies for its own use. Modifying the file as it does hinders my process for checking the integrity of backups; if the original asset footage files were the same as earlier copies then it would be easy to know that the backups are OK.
Thoughts?

It's all about this setting, "Write XMP ID To Files On Import" - which confirms that Adobe Premiere Pro is deliberately modifying the .mov file: http://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/using/preferences.html#WSE3BD4A43-7022-4fe6-97F5-95313935347B
These posts give some background as to why having this setting enabled would be beneficial: one benefit being to be able to skip conforming files by matching the conformed file with the original using the embedded XMP tag :-

http://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/using/preferences.html#WSE3BD4A43-7022-4fe6-97F5-95313935347B
http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/adobe-creative-suite/498627-why-premiere-modifying-video-files.html
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/205/876064

(Found using Google search term "adobe premiere pro date modified")
(will accept this answer, when 2 days has elapsed)

Cool, glad you found it.  I was going to suggest the same that it is meta data changes, but glad you found the specific meta data change.  The conforming does write out to separate files stored in the scratch disk, so source files should never be meaningfully modified beyond some meta-tagging.  It's basically just adding a serial number to the file for better identification.  This can be very key if you start using multiple prints of a scene in your production pipeline, though your personal pipeline may be simple enough it doesn't matter.

+1 Thanks @AJHendersonfor the support, particularly the point about multiple prints.


text:
How do I add an effect on certain length of the original clip in Premiere Pro CS6 using Keyframes?
Example: I have a clip of 2 mins in my timeline and I only want to add blur effect to certain length (say 45 seconds to 50 seconds) of the clip.

The easiest way to do this would be to cut your clip where you want the blurring effect to start/end.

In addition to KC McLaughlin's suggestion, for something like blur, you can keyframe the amount of blur to apply.  This allows you to do some interesting things like have something go from clear to blurry and then back to clear smoothly rather than suddenly being blurry.
You can also emulate what KC was saying by putting two keyframes one frame apart, but honestly, if you want it to just turn on and off instantly, cutting the clip up is probably the easiest approach unless you are going to be moving the clip around a lot.