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reasons for After Effects CC deprecating wmv and H.264
I've recently upgraded to After Effects CC from CS6 and I discovered that in the render queue, options for wmv and H.264 have been deprecated.  I know codecs come and go, but I'd like to understand the reasons why Adobe eliminated these options.  I know they're still available in Media Encoder CC, but why not After Effects CC?

While I'm not aware of any release of the official reasons for this, I can offer a strong theory based on my knowledge of the way workflows are intended with After Effects.  After Effects is an effects and composition package, it is not designed to be placed at the end of a processing pipeline, but rather in the middle of it.
After Effects is designed to work on clips that will be edited in to a finished product.  As such, it doesn't make a lot of sense to export from After Effects in a format that is targeted at end viewers, such as h.264 or WMV.  It makes much more sense to target high quality, low compression intermediate formats that will minimize iterative quality loss or simply to use embedded compositions directly in Premiere.
Since it isn't a designed use case to be doing final output from After Effects, it doesn't make a lot of sense to put in extra development time maintaining a feature that is redundant and not part of the main intended work flow of the product.  If you want to do a final output in that format, you can still use Media Encoder to do it and then they only have to license and maintain the encoders for one application rather than two.
It is unfortunate in the cases where you wanted to do a one off render of a clip, but that isn't their main use case that they are designing around.  They probably decided that maintaining that use case simply wasn't worth the cost of maintaining.


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120fps 720p footage with real time playback on Ubuntu? + editing?
I have a laptop with an i7 CPU, 1.73 GHz, 8GB RAM, Ubuntu 10.04 with an "ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5800 Series" graphics card. I have compiz enabled (which may be one of the culprits with the problem below).
I have recorded a few short videos in 720p resolution at 120fps (GoPro Hero 3), stored on my local HD. The mp4 videos range from 30MB to 500MB, so quite small.
I tried a variety of players, none of which seem to respond in real time  . In fact the response time is so bad that I get a few frames quite fast at the start but then only the odd frame every second to 5 seconds and the sound seems spliced! One of my 8 cores runs into the ground (100%), the others are essentially unused, with the video player process running at 98%. So obviously this is my limiting factor (can't multi-thread?).
(mplayer, xine both try to play in real time but drop many frames; vlc plays the sound, but shows impressionist rendering and then gets stuck on one frame quite early on; avidemux plays every frame but about 1/6th of real-time speed; cinelerra plays some of the frames only and quite slowly; kdenlive does not allow me to create a 120fps project; Kino converts and down-samples; Lives can't follow; OpenShot plays the sound Ok, but gets stuck on the first frame)
Playing standard 1080p 30fps footage uses about 65% of one core. I did expect that playing 120fps would drop frames, but not to the extent that I only see one every few seconds. In fact I thought that it would play about 1 in 4, which would be great for my purpose.
So I'd really appreciate if any of you had any hint as to how I should configure my video card, system or whatever to get better playback ability, i.e. real-time playback with my raw footage (without conversion or down-sampling prior to viewing).
This also affects my ability to edit the videos as I can't tell what I'm looking at in real time, which is very inconvenient when editing. I do not want to down-sample for the first stage of editing as I want to get a feel for the full video first and choose which sections to slow down for slow-motion and which sections to down-sample for normal real-time play.

Have you had a look at what your machine is doing, eg run top to see load. You need to find out where the bottleneck is- is it IO, CPU or something else.

While it is true that 720p video only has about half the data of a 1080p feed, the other thing you have to realize is that when you push the system beyond it's limit, it may spend a lot of time trying to process frames that it doesn't finish in time.  Depending on how the player is configured, it may give up and try to catch up rather than finish rendering the frame and get further behind.
Because of this, as soon as you get behind, you may now end up finding it is much harder for it to catch up.  You also run in to problems with keeping the data flowing quickly enough since the level of compression sounds like it may be higher (harder to decode) and the CPU is so busy that it can't be working on moving data up to be ready to read.
You probably should do a transcode of the video to a lower framerate and work with the transcoded copy to make editing decisions and then swap in the high framerate video only at the end.  After all, the only difference 120fps video will make on final output is anywhere that you end up doing a slow motion effect since you aren't going to have any display (including your computer screen) that can actually load 120 frames per second in to the image buffer.  Even 240hz screens are not displaying that many frames from a source.

There are a few things to consider. The MP4 spec was not designed for the playback of high frame rate files, because the files are highly compressed, and limited to using a single core for decompression. Even if you had 12 cores, the file would not decompress any faster.
The easiest way to solve your issue is to either encode the MP4 into another codec, or to do your editing and bounce out samples as needed.
As @mivk above said, if this is mostly for slow-mo purposes, you can encode the MP4 into Animation codec, Photo-JPEG, or Cineform. These codecs stand a better chance at playing back the file in closer to real time, but even then, they will still have difficulty.
That might give you enough real-time playback though to be able to move into your editor, to do your slow-mo effects, then export the file to 24/30/60 FPS, which you should have no problem playing on your machine.

If you shot at 120fps, it is presumably to get a slow motion effect. So the playback actually needs to be at your normal 24/25/30 fps speed to get the effect.
There is no such thing as 120 fps playback. The maximum I know of would be 60p.
What do ffmpeg or mediainfo report as the frame rate for these videos. If they report 120fps or some other weird value, then you could probably rewrap the videos in a container which would advertise the right fps. Something like ffmpeg -r 30 -i INFILE .... -r 30 OUTFILE.
Update to clarify after seeing the comments :
There is no transformation or loss when viewing footage in slow motion. (Arguably quite the opposite, since you have a better chance of seeing each and every frame).
A frame is a frame, whatever your playback speed.
Transformations only come into play once you decide to drop frames to achieve a faster (not-so-slow) speed, or to double some frames to increase the slow-motion effect further. Your 120fps footage is intended to either be played at the normal speed of your movie (24p, 60i, ... whatever speed is the right one for your medium), or to be processed by doubling/dropping frames to achieve the exact speed you want.
You did the right thing by shooting at a very high speed to achieve a slow-motion effect, while having enough frames to tweak the final speed more exactly if needed.
Your player does the right thing in showing you the slow-motion effect you shot, exactly as you shot it.
For a very long time (since the late 1920s), there used to be only 1 possible playback speed: 24 fps and nothing else. Later, with television, a few more speeds were added for engineering convenience: 25/50i and 30/60i (for 50Hz and 60Hz countries). Now, that has been extended to 48p, 50p and 60p, but that's it. There is no such thing as 120 fps playback.

I think it's "normal" that a video recorder ad 120fps is trying to play at 120fps. It's not very useful (as often screens refresh 60 times per second), but that's not the point. It would be strange if a video recorded at a certain framerate would try to playback at another. If the OP wants slow-motion he needs to put the 120fps through some editing program where it is interpreted as 30fps. That's material for another question though.

@Bart & all, exactly. I thought that is what I explained in my original post. The whole purpose is to edit the raw footage for slomo effects or downsample. But to choose which I need to be able to view it first without transformations so I don't loose any quality.

If I read this right, you want to watch your 120fps videos at 0.25 their real speed, seeing every single frame but at 30fps. That's what I do (GoPro 3+, 720p, 120fps) but it's a bit involved.
I use Blender video sequence editor. It's not intuitive but a good tutorial can make all the difference in the world, I learned with Mikeycal Meyers' tutorial:

Once you've gone through the basics it's as simple as

add your MP4 right out of the GoPro
remove the audio track (useless at this point)
set "Frame Range" to end at the last frame in your video
set "Resolution" to 1280x720
set "Frame Rate" to 30fps or 29.97 fps depending on your camera (mine uses 29.97, no idea why)
set "Output" to // (will write a file like 00000-59829.???)
pick your choice of "Encoding" settings (see tutorial)
hit Animation and wait a while, the output video will be slowmo at 30fps

Also, for editing real-life speed, I use HandBrake to resample the videos, because I didn't find how to tell Blender to do it. Here's a script I used to do this to all videos in a directory:
time for f in *.MP4; do HandBrakeCLI -i $f -o ${f}_30.mkv -f mkv -q 4 -r 29.97 --cfr; HandBrakeCLI -i $f -o ${f}_60.mkv -f mkv -q 4 -r 59.940 --cfr; HandBrakeCLI -i $f -o ${f}_120.mkv -f mkv -q 4 -r 119.88 --cfr; done

EDIT: found a faster way, using ffmpeg as described in
https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/How%20to%20speed%20up%20/%20slow%20down%20a%20video
ffmpeg -i GOPR0604.MP4_120.mkv -q 4 -filter:v "setpts=4.0*PTS" GOPR0604.MP4_120_slowmo.mkv

source: Stack Exchange

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

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Do Canon DSLRs and Camcorders use the same internal mics?
I don't know much about the topic, but I recently saw a Canon 650D DSLR in action and its internal mic was really good. If I got a camcorder such as the Canon Legria R406 would it use the same internal mic components?

The mics are not all the same across all Canon products.  I can't guarantee that the same mics aren't used in some different models, but I can guarantee they use more than one different mic.  Additionally, even if they do happen to use the same microphone, the placement of the mic within the device as well as amount of noise the mic makes and the quality of the analog to digital converter are going to make a big difference on how it sounds.
In other words, internal sound quality is not directly comparable between devices, other than by actually recording and listening to how it sounds.

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


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After Effects - Export Settings Window
The Export Settings Window does not appear when I am trying to export a project to Media Encoder. ANy solution?

What version of After Effects are you using?  Was it showing up before?  Are you able to adjust settings in Media Encoder?  Why do you expect an export settings window?  I don't have CC, but looking at a video showing the functionality, there is no export settings window, all the settings that are available are set in the Media Encoder itself.

It was shwoing before . It is CC the version.

If you are talking about the quality settings, when exporting through Media Encoder, it appears that Adobe has dropped support for altering your render quality from After Effects.  You are only given options about the compression itself, presumably the high quality render settings are always used now since you can no longer specify them at all under the "new, improved" Adobe CC.

I want the export sound/audio thing

@user5635 can you help us out and maybe find a screenshot of what window you're referring to? I'm not exactly 100% what you mean by "sound/audio thing".

Fixed it . I just restored factory settings

@user5635 - out of curiosity, could you post a screen shot of the screen you intended.  We might be able to post a simpler method for others experiencing your problem.  Thanks.


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How did cameramen manually focus in the film days?
In the days before LCDs and digital cameras, manually focusing an interchangeable lens still camera wasn't a whole lot different than it is today. In most designs, you had a mirror that gave the photographer a through-the-lens view, allowing them to accurately focus. When the shutter button was pressed, the mirror flipped out of the way, exposing the film.
However, this method is obviously not usable for the continuous focusing required by video camera operators. Modern cameras solve this problem by using Live View. How was this problem solved in the film days?

Hey Chinmay, welcome to Video Production.

@AJHenderson: Thanks! I don't really do video, but I might stick around. Looks like there are some interesting questions on here!

There are two main ways this was solved:
1. Measuring Focus
When using this method, the focus puller measures the distances at every point during the shot, and then pulls focus to these marks, at times making adjustments when an actor or grip misses their mark.
This still occurs today, however is becoming less prevalent due to the filmmaking styles being used (handheld, where the same marks are not hit each time).
2. Video Assist
Using one of several methods, including half-silvered mirrors, CCD sensors behind the film negative, and telecine transfers, a video split is made. On modern productions shooting on film, this split is what is sent to 'Video Village', where the director sits.
Telecine Transfer (Not the correct term)
I've never really understood how it worked, until now, so I present this lovely diagram from Wikipedia:

In essence, the light shines in and exposes the negative. After that, it passes through a series of half-silvered mirrors, each time being split into separate light components and recorded onto an imaging chip. These are them combined, and displayed in the viewfinder, or as a video-out.
One side effect of this method, is the mechanical shutter is visible, as a black screen lasting 1/50th of a second, 25 times a second (whenever the negative itself is not exposed).
3. Parallel Sight
Common throughout the 1950s and 60s, having a parallel sight (separate lens, like what you had on a cheap film point-and-shoot camera) allowed the operator to see approximately what was being exposed onto the negative.
4. Half-Silvered Mirror
Update: Added from AJ Henderson's comment below.
As mentioned in the comment, a very cheap way of getting an image to a viewfinder was to simply use a half-silvered mirror, somewhere between the lens and the negative. In this way, half the light transmitted through the lens exposes the negative, and half is seen through the operator's viewfinder.
This method does not allow for multiple viewfinders, monitors, or screens, unless another split is created.

Great answer! But what about non-studio work? How the hell did they focus when doing say, wildlife?

I'm not going to add my own answer here since I think this answer is best quality, but a slightly lower quality, but cheaper option is a simple half silvered mirror to reflect light to the viewfinder.  It does cause a little bit of light to bleed into the film chamber, but it's a relatively small amount.  A fixed half silvered mirror could send light to the viewfinder while also still exposing the film.  I'm not 100% certain, but I seem to recall this being used in some consumer grade film cameras.  (I was very young when they were still even a little in use though, so my memory could be off.)

@ChinmayKanchi They would've used one of the above methods to create an image in the viewfinder, and focussed by eye. Several things made this possible, including audiences' tolerance to out-of-focus footage, less sharp lenses (so the difference between in and slightly out footage was less), and operators were just generally better at estimating distances (similar to how a film photographer can estimate exposure, where a digital one often has no idea - it's a skill they never needed to learn)

Telecine is for transferring film to video, it has nothing to do with the video split on film cameras. Basically a video split (aka video assist) is just a small video camera focused on the ground glass screen in the camera's viewfinder.

We are used to 1080p quality images today. NTSC is equivalent to 420p, so its sharpest image looks blurry to modern audiences. Hand focusing with a telephoto lens is sufficiently sharp for NTSC and PAL video work.

Good quality film cameras have a reflex viewfinder system, where "reflex" means that you're viewing through the lens, and thus you can judge focus by eye.
To achieve this There are, er were, two basic strategies:

Split the beam of light from the lens with a prism or half silvered
    mirror, meaning that most of the light goes to the film, and a bit
    goes to the viewfinder.    Advantages: no shutter flicker,
    cheaper. Disadvantages: less light,    both for exposing the
    film, and a dimmer image in the viewfinder (in    low light
    situations it can make it difficult to focus or even see what's
    going on).    This is how my Bolex camera does it.

Position a revolving mirror between the lens and the film plane. While the film is being pulled down by the sprockets the mirror
moves into place, bouncing the light into the viewfinder, and once
the film is ready to be exposed, the mirrors swings around and the
viewfinder goes temporarily black. It's basically what an SLR camera
does, but instead of flipping up the mirror is rotating.
Advantages: more light for the film and the viewfinder, one less optical element in the light path, ability to vary the angle of the
shutter allowing for fine control over exposure without affecting
the depth of field. Disadvantages: More complicated
(=expensive), flicker in viewfinder (actually I think this is
something of an advantage, because you always could tell when the
camera was running, and also when filming video displays you could
make sure that the balck bar was visible in the viewfinder, and
therefore not visible to the film), some degree of rolling shutter.This is how my CP16 does it, as well as pretty much all professional
cinema cameras.
 the mirror is the thing that looks like a bow tie.

As you can see, both methods allowed the operator to see through the lens while filming, allowing for on-the-fly focusing. Video splits also allowed a live video feed to be set up, meaning the focus puller (and director etc.) could have a monitor, but this was relatively late in the piece. A video split is basically a video camera bolted on to where the eyepiece goes, or sometimes with a separate beam-splitter. Until video splits came along the focus puller checked the focus points in the rehearsal, made marks on the floor with camera tape, consulted their cinematographer's manual for the depth-of-field charts, and eyeballed it.
You'n whippersnappers don't know how easy you gots it. Now get off my lawn!


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How to achieve this kind of masks and transitions
I've come across this video and, as a total noob in video editing, I find it stunning. After watching it a couple of questions arise regarding masks and transitions:

The intro title fills with a smoke-like mask. Where can I find a mask like that, if possible for free?
The subtitle and the rest of the titles appear with each letter growing independently. I guess that could be done using a Stroke for each letter and animating it? Seems like a lot of work. Isn't there an automated process for that?
The transitions in 0:16, 0:49 and 1:05. How are those done?

I'd also appreciate any kind of basic tutorial about color correction to achieve the same looks as that video.

You're asking quite some things in one question. Could you please ask every question separately? This keeps the site organised and enables people to answer one question, even if they don't know answers to the other questions. You could for example ask four questions about the subjects: -Intro, -Subtitle, -Transitions -Color correction.

Let me start by saying what they did there is actually far, Far, FAR simpler than you think.  I'll try to break it down shot by shot what is going on.
On the title, there are three main elements.  The first element fades in on a time lapse of clouds moving across the mountain.  This appears to be the same time lapse they use a few seconds later for the first subtitle.
Superimposed over that are two elements.  The first and faintest is a fairly small image of a cloud.  It appears to simply be luma keyed or possibly additively blended (bright parts make bright, dark parts don't impact) and probably has a black background  It's quite probably a CG cloud using particle simulation.
The last element of this first shot is a title composed of white text.  The text is blended in using a gradient dissolve that bases the time it dissolves being driven by the luminance of an underlying image.
As a demonstration, lets start with this CC image from centophobia on flikr.  With some quick rotating and additive blending (Lighten) in Photoshop, applying a greyscale mode change and then using the curves to give us contrast more suitable to our purposes we get an image like this (after resizing and cropping to fit a 1080p video).

Now that we have an image to use for the base of our dissolve, we can actually do the title.  Here is a screenshot from doing this in Premiere.

First, I imported the image I created and then I made a basic title with plain white block letters.  I then added both of these to a sequence.  Note that the smoke layer should be in the sequence with the title, but it should not be visible.
Next, I added a Gradient Dissolve to the title clip from the Transition Effects.  Set the Gradient Layer to the layer you put your gradient map on (the smoke image.)
Next, adjust the settings to add softness to the transition (this is what causes it to work through the gradient rather than having a hard line being exposed).
Set a keyframe on the transition completion at the beginning and end of where you want it to dissolve in (using the little stopwatch looking button) and set a keyframe at 100 for the beginning and 0 for the end.
When you run it you should get something like this:

Now for the other titles, it does appear to clearly be working off the strokes of the characters, so there are a few different possibilities.  The most likely one would be to use a similar gradient dissolve, but build the mask based directly on the title.  Drawing a gradient on each character would allow for the control of the reveal to be precisely controlled and the Transition softness would be set to 0 or near 0 to keep a hard line.
As an example, here's doing something for a large letter K.

They may have had a titling software that could generate the gradients for them.  Stroke animation is another option, but you'd have to use true vector shapes for the fonts then and a lot more manual work would have to be done to keyframe each different part of each stroke.  The gradient way isn't particularly quick, but it's probably less effort than stokes.
The final transition appears to just be a  highly motion blurred image flying across the frame really quickly and having the other clip after it clears the field.  Just take an image with a lot of horizontal blur, send it across within a few frames and cut to the other video the moment it completely obscures the scene.

Wow, what a thorough and detailed answer. Thanks a lot!


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Video from still images - Zooming
I am completing a school project on distributed computing. I have been granted access to a Blue Gene super computer to run an algorithm to create static Mandelbrot set images. I have the algorithm created and running. The image sizes are 800x600.
My project is to combine these images to create a video with a zooming effect. I am new to creating videos from still images and I am looking for some clarification on a few things.

At what frame/rate should I be aiming for? I want it to be as smooth as possible.
I want the zooming to be quite seamless, how quickly should I be zooming in with the images? My algorithm can be quite precise.

If someone could let me know or post some resources on the matter. I feel this should be similar to creating cartoon like zooming.
Mathew A
An example image created with the algorithm

Interesting question. First, here's a question for you: can your supercomputer actually calculate and render, in real time, an animated zoom on images so complex?
My guess (only a guess) is that it will need more than 1/30 sec. to complete each frame (let's assume 30 frames per second as a minimal frame rate in which to achieve a smooth zoom). If that's the case then you just need to spit out x number of images (bitmaps) that can be played back later, at 30 f.p.s., by any non-super computer.
A zoom is just a scale change. Assuming that you don't have in mind a particular rate of change in scale -- in other words, that you don't need to get to a particular scale in a particular time -- try 1% of scale-increase per frame (I'll check this and post an update if you can do much better).
Satisfactory zooming will also involve easing at the head and tail of the zoom. If you need an easing algorithm, just ask. It probably won't be in the language you're using but you'll be able to figure it out.

UPDATE -- I just read something about Blue Gene. Maybe it can do 800x600 Mandlebrodt images @ 30 f.p.s.!  But the same rate-of-change applies -- smoothness is a human perception thing.

I am unable to do it in real-time, as I have to set a job and it could take up to 24 hours to find the free cycles to run. I have to set it and I will report back how it goes! Thanks!

Since you're techy and math-y, you've probably already figured out that the amount of zoom on each frame is based on the size of the previous frame. That is, you don't want frame zoom to be based on the original frame size, like 100%, 90%, 80%, 70% because that would lead quickly to 0%! The "size" or "zoom" of each frame should be a percentage of the previous frame. 99% would give a slow, dreamy zoom. 90% would give a fast, racing zoom.

Well, math is just a tool; there are no inflexible rules about how to use it. You say “...the amount of zoom on each frame is based on the size of the previous frame ...” What’s wrong with basing the scale change on the ORIGINAL frame-size? If you start with an 800x600 frame and you zoom out in thirty 1-per-cent, linear, steps (i.e. first 99% of orig, then 98% of orig,...) you end up at 568 x 426.  If you zoom out down geometrically (i.e. first 99% of orig., then 99% of frame 2, ...) you end up at 598 x 448. A 3% difference over a second (assuming 30 f.p.s.). Is that an important difference?

arty - please DO report back on your Blue Gene zoom!

I'm going to suggest 24FPS due to the fact this is film framerate where as 30FPS is television. Alternatively you could try 48FPS and 60FPS as those have the benefit for feeling more "real" or "hyperreal" to the human eye.

But why is film a better option than television?


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Wirecast recording lagging from a video file source
I have a recorded video in HD format with the source file being about 2GB for 30 minutes of footage. I added it as a new Video Shot in WireCast intending to edit it, however, I got two problems. First, the quality drop tremendously regardless of what kind of output options I use and second, the output video is lagging and that is of course recorded in the final version.
I first tried to compress the video to reduce its size and I got it down to about 300MB but the results where exactly the same.
I then tried to stream the video from another computer on the same network using Desktop Presenter to reduce the load on the one where Wirecast was actually working, however, I got exactly the same results, if not worse.
Any tips on how I can deal with this issue?

What HD format?  What codec are you using?  2GB for 30 minutes of footage is very small, particularly for editing.  300MB for 30 minutes is pretty near uselessly small for any purpose even if you are at 720p.  Any kind of re-encode at any of those file sizes is going to result in serious loss of quality.

The 2GB file is the raw format coming out from the Drift action camera that I'm using. Here's the properties of the file, not sure how I can retrieve more info:
Type: MPEG Movie
File Size: 2.5 GB
Image Size: 1920 x 1080
Frame Rate: 29.97
Source Audio Format: 48000 Hz - compressed - Stereo
Project Audio Format: 48000 Hz - 32 bit floating point - Stereo
Total Duration: 00:29:32:16
Pixel Aspect Ratio: 1.0

It sounds like your input is too compressed.  Your current quality level is already below what Netflix uses for their full quality HD streaming and is right around Youtube's recommended settings for final output of video.
The problem is, this is already a very highly compressed level.  Both compressing and decompressing an h.264 file take a lot of processing power.  The more compressed the video, the more processing power it takes.
Since the file starts highly compressed, your CPU has to work hard to decode the video and then has to try to re-compress it for the stream.  If it can't keep up with the frame rate, then you start getting quality drop and lag as it does it's best to keep up with the stream.
Further compressing the source video just amplified this problem, though if you have already pre-recorded the video, why not edit it offline and then export the video so that you can stream it without having to re-encode on the fly?
Wirecast isn't designed for editing, it is designed for streaming.

Thanks for the reply, the explanation helped me understand the situation a little bit better. I'm using Wirecast as I have a lot of pieces of information that I'm adding dynamically - something like a scoreboard for a basketball game while adding voice commentary at the same time. I'm doing this with a prerecorded file as a practice keeping in mind that in the future I'll have both situations - prerecorded offline files and live streaming where I'll have to achieve the same result in real time. I'm beginning to wonder whether Wirecast is the right software to use for this....

@mmvsbg - most likely you will need a switcher to handle the scoreboard stuff.  It'll probably be difficult to do with just wirecast.  If there aren't already questions about it, you can certainly ask more here.  Things like video switchers and dedicated encoders will drastically simplify and improve your ability to do what you are trying to accomplish, though they aren't free.  The cost has come down a lot, but still probably in the neighborhood of $1000 or more to do well.


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Does RCA or "interface connector" (VGA?) offer better video quality?
I'm trying to archive a laser disc as a digital file. My laser disc player (a Pioneer) has 2 video output options: RCA and a 15-pin port labelled "interface connector". The 15 pins are arranged in 2 rows. After researching video connectors, I think the 15-pin port is VGA. What would be the higher resolution output for creating a digital recording?

The 'interface connector' is (almost certainly) a serial control port, not a video output. LVD stored composite analog video, so there are no chroma or difference signals available to assist in digitizing the video.

So for my device, it doesn't matter whether RCA or VGA has better video quality, because my device only has RCA. Is that correct?

You didn't give us the model number, so I can't be positive, but I've never seen a Pioneer LVD player that had VGA output, and I'm very familiar with the Pioneer 15-pin serial control port, so I'm pretty confident that you don't have VGA (or any component) outputs. That just leaves the RCA composite video out.

Pioneer CLD-V2400. Looks like you're right. The 15-pin connector is listed under "Other", separate from "Video output" above, leading me to believe that it is not a video output port. I think this confirms your intuition. http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/pio/pe/images/portal/cit_3424/31178828CLDV2400GSpec.pdf


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Do internal SSDs challenge the conventional wisdom of storing digital assets on external "scratch" disks?
I've heard that all project assets should be stored on a separate "scratch" disk for the sake of increased performance. I'm wondering if that conventional wisdom holds even when your "scratch" disk is HDD and your internal disk is SSD. (I'm aware that the cost/capacity ratio is lower for HDDs. My question concerns performance issues, not capacity.)
Here's how my question originated: I am experiencing lag using my mid-2012 MacBook Air (i5, 8GB RAM) to edit Final Cut Pro X. I'm wondering if re-arranging my assets would stand a change of improving performance. Here's where things are right now:

The application (the *.app file for Final Cut Pro X) is on my internal SSD.
The library (the *.fcplibrary file) is on my thunderbolt-attached HDD.
The digital assets (stills and video) are on the same external HDD.

My library file merely references the digital assets; I am not copying them into the resource fork. For that reason, my library file is small enough that I could store it on my local drive. The new arrangement would be:

The application (the *.app file for Final Cut Pro X) is on my internal SSD.
The library (the *.fcplibrary file) is on my internal SSD.
The digital assets (stills and video) are on the same external HDD.

So, would I be breaking some law of the universe with this configuration? And where did the conventional wisdom on "scratch" disks come from, anyway? Does it still apply to SSDs? (Again, in terms of performance only please, not capacity.)

Scratch disks should never be external.  I'm not sure where you heard that.  External drives can be used for long term asset storage, but it is best to move assets local to work on them.
The point of scratch disks is to be the highest speed work area you have available to work from.  Scratch disks are used for data that needs to be moved in and out of memory quickly, so internal SSDs are the best bet.
The one thing you don't want to do is you don't want assets and scratch disks on the same magnetic drive because of seek time.  This isn't a concern with SSDs though, so you can generally have them on the same drive.  If you are working with very large files, then there may be a bandwidth advantage to having them on different SSDs, but in order of importance you want memory to be the fastest possible, then scratch disk, then working asset storage, then long term asset storage.
The point is to keep data supplied to the CPU and GPU as much as possible.

Just so I understand, are you saying that all media currently being used for a project should be on an internal drive?

@NathanLucy - all media should be on the fastest appropriate storage available without negatively impacting faster levels.  So if you have enough room and bandwidth to put video files on SSDs without impacting your scratch, do it.  If not, put it on the fastest thing you can without impacting scratch.  Your system will work from memory the most, followed by scratch, then from media assets.

The "external drive" advice of yore also reflects this issue of keeping your video files off of the system drive. The OS itself will be competing for the use of this drive -- swap space, executables of the video editing and other programs that are running, etc -- and especially with OS's that weren't developed to be real-time. It was a bigger deal with physical hard drives and a bigger deal in an era when there was one internal drive: the boot drive.

@Wayne - I'm not sure what period had only one internal drive in any serious workstation.  Most of my earliest machines even in the early 90s had multiple HDDs to separate OS access from program data access.  Back then it was even worse to try to work from external drives as the connection speeds available were incredibly slow, the exact opposite of what you'd want for a scratch disk.

@AJ Jenderson I mainly started video in the SCSI era, and external SCSI disk arrays were the answer.

@Wayne ah yeah, if you were doing SCSI, though SCSI wasn't so much "external" as it was "internal in another box."  I was a bit after SCSI but that makes more sense as to where the idea came from.  I'm still not sure why you'd have scratch on an external SCSI vs an internal array aside from maybe space in the case.  It's interesting how we kind of took a step back to firewire for a long time until finally getting to USB-C and thunderbolt that can provide a full PCI-E connection over a wire.

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


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FCP X 10.1.1 - Transitioning to libraries without blending
As excited as I am about the new asset management possibilities of the .1 release of Final Cut Pro X, I'm nervous about screwing up my existing projects and events. My projects and events are currently spread across 2 hard drives (my boot drive and an external drive). Some are "hidden" via Event Manager X. Some projects and events belong together, and others do not. I performed the upgrade to FCP X 10.1.1 (apparently they've already released some bug fixes to 10.1.0). When I did this, I kept my projects and events "hidden".
Now it's time to import them, but I want to make sure I pair the correct projects and events in the correct libraries. (In other words, I want to have 1 library for each client, not 1 library for each hard drive, nor 1 library for each project.) There is not an menu option for importing and pairing projects and events—at least not that I can find. How can I conduct combine projects and events into libraries in a controlled way?

I've seen some tutorials for upgrading to libraries which make use of Event Manager X floating around the internet.  Perhaps that's a good direction to look into.  Haven't tried it myself, so I'm not really sure.

I got it to work. The key is to update Events and Projects to Libraries (which, incidentally, contain Events and Projects) in stages:

Hide everything except the Events and Projects that belong together in the same Library. Event Manager X is a great tool for this, as Jason suggested in the comments. Whatever tool you use, just make sure that only the Events and Projects that belong together are in the folders "Final Cut Events" and "Final Cut Projects".
Next, open Final Cut Pro X.
Go to File and click "Update Projects and Events..." near the bottom of the menu:
Click "Update All"

Final Cut Pro X will do its thing and you'll have a new library with just the Projects and Events you want inside of it.

In reality, the stakes are lower than I realized when I wrote my question. You can still move Events and Projects between Libraries after upgrading. In other words, upgrading to 10.1 doesn't destroy Events and Projects and replace them with Libraries. It places Events and Projects inside of Libraries.

Excellent, glad it worked out for you.  Thanks for sharing what you found.  I live in a Windows world, so I can only experience FCP vicariously.


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Graphics Cards that have SDI outs
I am looking for a medium to high end graphics card that has SDI outputs. I have a home studio with a SDI matrix switch and I want to hook my Gaming Computer into this rig. I am planning on doing some gaming livestreams, and I want to use my studio m/e switch to control the stream.
My other idea was to use some DVI to SDI converter, but since I have multiple monitors, it would probably be cheaper to replace my graphics cards

Honestly, a GeForce + Converter is going to be cheaper than a Quadro + SDI Option board, probably by a factor of several thousand dollars.  Easiest is probably to set up a mirrored output for your monitor and the SDI converter, and you can play and route the SDI separately.

Yeah I found the quadro +sdi but was unclear if I could game with it. It seemed more targeted towards developers. I think I will just buy a high quality scan converter then and use my existing graphics card. I am thinking of the blackmagic teras 2d converter, but we shall see what my budget holds

@sww1235 - I had a Quadro in my first laptop in college.  It was great for running Maya and Softimage, but it could barely run even old games.  Quadro's are designed for OpenGL and array processing support.  They are not designed to efficiently implement DirectX stuff.

You are best off to convert from a supported format (DVI, HDMI, maybe even DisplayPort) to SDI.  SDI cards are not designed for gaming, they are designed for workstations and video.  You aren't going to get a good quality gaming graphics card with SDI outputs.

Most current graphics cards will have HDMI output and a HDMI to SDI convertor might be cheaper solution than a DVI to SDI.

Great point about HDMI possibly being cheaper.  I think the costs are roughly similar on the Black Magic Design ones, but it is worth highlighting that it doesn't have to be DVI.

Cheers AJ - noted that the costs can be similar.

Looks like HDMI is about $100 cheaper than DVI, so, worth using whatever the card already has. :)

Sounds good. I would probably use either DisplayPort or DVI as they lock. Interesting that HDMI is cheaper.


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How to create a video like this?
How do I create a video like this?
If I want to create such videos, I want to know

Type of instruments to be used(including camera, etc.)
Light settings
After effects
Software suggestions if any

Is there some particular part of the video you are looking to reproduce?  It is best to describe what you are trying to do with words in addition to a link anyway (in case the link goes dead) and there is so many different things you could be asking about in that video that it really needs more clarification.

Additionally, it is unclear what you are asking with the 4 points.  Any kind of camera could have been used as long as it has reasonably high speed modes for the few slowed down shots and after effects isn't even really needed for what they did there.

you'll also need lots of paint! and lots of dancers :)

The link no longer works, and without a description of what the video showed, this question has become useless.

As currently stated, the answer is, you can't.  The only thing special about that video is that it is very well planned out and coordinated with lots of lighting making it almost certainly outside your budget to reproduce something similar.
The video work itself is all actually fairly basic.  Any camera with a decent dynamic range and sharpness could capture the level of detail, though protecting it from the powder is always a fun trick.  It would need a decently fast frame rate for the shots that are slowed down, but 60fps would probably be sufficient.  They are also using a dolly or steadicam for the smooth shots that track across the scene (from one side to the other).
Most of what you see is simply lighting as shot that is then color graded to give it that look.  The color grading and speed adjustment is very basic and even a fairly simple non-linear editor could achieve it.
The problem is that the shots depend entirely on the content actually being shot and the way it was lit.  There is a ton of light on that scene.  There are three or four massive sport stadium/construction site style light arrays in the background and more light (possibly reflectors) in the front.  They all need to be properly aimed and setup to put the light where it is needed and this is a complex and costly operation that is drastically beyond the scope of what can be answered in a simple question and answer.

There's a lot more in that scene then great lighting, consider the actors and extras, and how they were directed for blocking, timing, and expression. This is far more valuable to the viewer than lighting alone, it's the voice and look of expression.

@filzilla - agreed, the original question asked specifically about lighting and effects though.  Most of the visual look comes from how it was shot, the content was also very well organized, but that is more directing than cinematography.

@AJHenderson, you are correct and you did answer the question. I just think that it should be mentioned that putting a scene together like that has a lot more to it than the scope of the question: directors, actors, makeup, wardrobe... tools are not enough, it takes very skilled people. But you know that. Sorry to be a pain in the butt.

@filzilla - not a pain in the butt at all.  I'm glad you commented.  It's great information.  I was just letting you know why I didn't include it in my answer.  That wasn't supposed to be disparaging, just explaining why I didn't update my answer to include it.  I think it is a great comment to have on the answer.

hi AJhenderson, thank you for the tip, you have a very good history of answering on target, you have this gift of focus, and filtering to connect with the question. Something I can learn by following you.


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In cartoons, what is created first - video or sounds?
In some modern cartoons the animation of face, particularly mouth, is very realistic - most of vowels are mimicked correctly and on-time by mouth movements. (Particularly I'm talking about Family Guy episodes).
My main question - what is created first - animation or sound recording?
How the process of combining those two looks like? I think it is a complicated task to match sound and animation.
Is there a software that recognizes words that actor have said and automatically simulates mouth movements?

It depends on the exact studio's process, but generally either an animatic (basically a roughly animated storyboard) or the audio is done first.  In the case of Family Guy and American Dad specifically, it sounds like they work on the audio and the animatic first.  The advantage to doing an animatic first is it can help the voice actors visualize what will be happening, but that makes the process take a bit longer (which is particularly bad for TV).
Once the final audio is done, the final animation can be done to match the sound.  It's actually fairly easy just looking at the wave file of an audio track to pick out where the syllables are, though there is also software that can be used to automatically identify the proper moments for different types of mouth movements with pretty decent accuracy.  Once you know all the key frames (the particular points in time that need to have a given mouth shape) it's pretty easy to animate in between them to get the proper facial movement.
While I was researching American Dad's particular process for this question, I also stumbled across this video from the Wall Street Journal that I thought might be of interest relating to the question.

That is way beyond any of my expectations. Thank you for your time and research!


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Vegas Pro 12 vs Vegas Pro 12 Premium
I'm currently shopping for Sony Vegas Pro 12 and I'm slightly confused at what I am finding. In addition to the standard Vegas Pro, I've found a "Premium" version that contains some upgrades (SoundForge 11, 180 days of support) but at a drastically reduced price (50% of the standard).
The premium version isn't even on Sony's website, so I'm guessing it was made for independent retailers.
Is there a difference between Vegas Pro 12 and Vegas Pro 12 Premium? Or is this just a great deal?

I couldn't find any more details about it than you.  It appears to be available from multiple reputable retailers, but I'd probably try contacting Sony first to verify it.  It may just actually be a very good deal as they are trying to break in to a market place largely controlled by Adobe.  They've been making a lot of growth lately and this may just be a tactic for trying to get further gains.  With Adobe going subscription only and Apple pretty much abandoning the professional market, it's certainly the right time for it.

You're probably right. I just cashed in some credit card rewards, so once I get those Amazon gift cards I will buy it and post my findings.

On it's way, I'll give an official answer by the end the of week!

After purchasing Sony Vegas Pro 12 Premium I can confirm that it DOES include the full version of Sony Vegas Pro 12!
This really is a great deal as it also includes DVD Architect Pro 6.0, Sound Forge Pro 11.0, and CD Architect 5.2.


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Is it possible to select particular portion of a video in adobe premiere pro?,
Im a beginner to video editing, kindly help me to select (free select, as like in Adobe Photoshop) particular portion of a video, to merge with another video?

Joy, it is not clear what you are asking.  What are you trying to accomplish?  Are you talking about wanting to select some portion of a video to copy from one video to another while ignoring the rest?  If so, how do you want to track it from one frame to another.  Is it stationary or something that moves around?  If this is what you are talking about, it is not easy in most cases.

Yeah..@Henderson you have understood my query very exactly.. yes i need to select some portion of the stationary video., and also suggest me some tips for motion video also.

One of the best software to change a selected area in a video clip is Imagineers mocha.Using adob after effects it can creat a new video file with the help of mocha.

To build on AJ's answer in a different direction, you may want to look at After Effects, which is a popular compositing tool. In After Effects, you can use the pen tool (somewhat like the lasso tool) to create a custom shape. With that shape, you can create a mask for the video. This mask can then show only the video inside of the shape.
Further, the mask can change over time with your video. If the subject of your first video moves, you can adjust the mask's shape as well. In other words, the mask can be animated, though this process can take a lot of time.

If the element you need to put on the video doesn't move and the shot you are putting it in doesn't move, the best bet is to actually use Photoshop to extract the object you want to place in another video and put it in a file format that supports a transparent background (TGA, PSD, etc.)  You can then import it to Premiere and place the image wherever you want in the frame using the Motion effects settings to define the size and placement.
If the video you are placing it in is not stationary, then it will be necessary to perform motion tracking on the video you want to place the image within.  This is much more complicated and is generally done in something like After Effects.

It sounds like Joy might be looking for just a basic overview of video compositing? It's hard to tell how simple or advanced the request is.

@ZeroFlux - yeah, agreed.  That's why I was trying to flush it out a bit more.  I decided to limit my answer to what can be done easily in Premiere and what seems to match with the simple situation he described, but I think your answer adds value too for the more complex case.

Unless I'm misunderstanding your question, I would try a Garbage Matte effect (either 4, 8, or 16-point).  Stack the two video clips on the timeline (e.g. one video clip on track V1 and the other on V2).  Drag n Drop the Garbage Matte effect (8-point is a good starting point) on to the top video clip.  Activate the Garbage Matte effect in the Effect Controls window and then drag the points to select the portion of the top clip video that you want.
Only the part of the top clips video that lies within the bounds of garbage matte markers will show through.  The rest of the video will be the bottom video clip.
This is reasonable video on the subject. He basically merges two video clips of the same scene with different exposure levels to get a single video with good exposure throughout:

Search youtube for Garbage Matte premiere and you will find several helpful videos on it.


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How do I rescue a Final Cut 7 project that elicits "File Error: Wrong Type" when I try to open it in FCP?
When I try to open this project, Final Cut Pro 7.0.3 running on Mavericks pops up an error box that says "File Error: Wrong Type."
I've fixed this in the past using the Project Repair tool in Digital Rebellion's great Pro Maintenance set of tools but I'd like to find a free option if possible.
I've seen people discuss setting the file type and creator, possibly using a command line tool, SetFile, that is part of the OS X developer tools but none of them seemed to have complete instructions and there were a number of claims of it not working anyway.

After installing SetFile (instructions below), go to terminal and execute this command:
setfile -c "KeyG" -t "FCPF" INSERT_FILENAME_HERE

According to SetFile's man page, "-c" sets the creator and "-t" sets the type.
I found what the type and creator should be set to in Peppy's second post on this thread: http://hintsforums.macworld.com/archive/index.php/t-16983.html
SetFile can be installed as part of the Xcode Command Line Tools by opening Terminal and typing:
xcode-select --install

But if I recall that sometimes fails so you might also try downloading it from the Apple Developer site.


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Do I need an attenuation cable between my audio recorder and the RCA out of a DJ's mixing board?
I'm filming a wedding in a couple weekends and I'm double checking everything to make sure that I'm ready.
I'm going to be plugging directly into the RCA out of the DJ's mixer board at the reception to capture the audio for the speeches and toasts, but I'm curious as to whether or not I'll need an attenuation cable between the recorder and the RCA-to-3.5mm cable that goes into my Tascam DR-07 MkII.
Thoughts? And if I do need one, do you have a recommendation as to which one I should buy? I already own a Sescom Tascam, male-to-male cable that goes from my recorder to my 5D MkII, so should I/could I use this with an RCA cable?

Doubtful that you'd need one, but the fact that you're asking means you should have one with you. (-:

It depends entirely on the output of the board.  It is highly unlikely that it will be needed as it should most likely match up with the line input on your Tascam since both are professional devices, but stranger things have been known to happen.  Some boards do output to consumer level signal on the RCA connections rather than expecting a professional tape or CD deck, particularly on cheaper DJ equipment.

Copied from the Tascam manual:
Analog audio input/output ratings
MIC/EXT IN jacks (supporting plug-in power)
Connector: 1/8” (3.5 mm) stereo mini
Input impedance: 25 kΩ
Nominal input level: –20 dBV
Maximum input level: –4 dBV
This Tascam doesn't even take nominal consumer level without distorting (-10dBV).
Most likely on an RCA output from a mixer you'll have -10dBV, so you'll need to pad the level by at least 10 dB (nearly 22dB if the DJ mixer outputs professional +4dBu).
But, the Tascam lets you trim level before recording, so it looks like all the pad you need is in the Tascam itself.
Just make sure you set that beforehand to a level around the -12dB mark on the Tascam's meters and that you take out the Auto Gain, which always ruins levels. Check the manual which explains how to do these clearly.

Thanks! Everything worked perfectly by plugging an RCA-to-3.5mm cable to the record-out on the DJ's board.


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How do I make a space themed video intro?
I am new to video editing. I have been using iMovie and there is a preset video intro with a space-theme that I like but i want to edit the intro itself which the iMovie software won't allow me to do. What steps can I take to create the intro myself?

First up you'll have to upgrade to a different Video Editing program that has more support for the custom effects that you'll need to create an intro. For professional-looking video intros, I recommend using Adobe After Effects. Premiere Pro, Sony Vegas Pro and Pinnacle Studio are also viable options.
Since you're new to video editing, I recommend looking for some tutorials on what you're trying to achieve. I found this tutorial on YouTube which seems to fit your description:

Take what you learned from watching tutorials, and use it to create the intro you that suits you.


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Motorized tripod head with zoom
I am looking into a motorized tripod head to use with a standard camcorder and am wondering what people normally do for zoom?
The camera I am using is a Canon HF R56. (I am not interested in the CT-V1)

Cameras which support external control of zoom, focus, and iris normally have a port for this purpose.  LANC is the most common, but it appears that your camera doesn't have a LANC port.  According to the documentation to which you linked, the camera supports "remote control & streaming" via WiFi.  If it is at all possible to control your camera's zoom remotely, then it seems that WiFi would be the most likely method.


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Intersecting animated masks
As a quick demonstration, here's an illustration;

So I have two shapes (2 and 3), which intersect (4). I want to animate the position (possibly also scale) of these two shapes, while having footage masked inside each numbered area. The shapes should move independently of the footage.
I've gotten as far as masking the footage for 2 and 3, but the intersection is what makes me scratch my head. Is there a way to do this in After Effects CC without any hand-tooling for a mask for the intersecting area?

My first thought: what happens at the intersection? Is it just overlapping footage, like in the middle of a "dissolve"? My second thought: once you figure that out, I'd be tempted to create the #2 masked shot first, then use that as the "background" for the #3 masked shot. But that's after you figure out what happens when they overlap. (The overlapping area COULD be a third masked shot that you layer on top of the other two masked shots.)

What exactly is your issue? What do you expect to happen when the masks intersect? Are you masking one footage file with both masks at diffrent areas or does mask 2 and 3 have different footage that they are masking?

@ProfessorFartSparkle - it sounds like he wants a different video entirely to play in area 4, so each number has its own video driving it.

Aaah I see, makes sense now. Then I know an answer for that.

Simply copy the two animated masks to the 4th footage file and set them to "Intersect" instead of "Add". Then they will only reveal the footage that they are applied to when they intersect with another mask. Then put this footage files layer ontop of the others.
Here a screenshot as a reference.

This was the best way I could think of too.


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FFmpeg overlaying and blending videos
I am trying to use FFmpeg to overlay one video on top of the other using an additive blend. One video is the actual video I want to transcode, the other is a ~10 second long video I want to put into one corner, sort of an animated watermark. The watermark video is some white animated stuff with a black background.
So far, I have tried something along these lines:
$ /d/ffmpeg/ffmpeg.exe -i actualvideo.mkv -i myoverlay.mp4 \
-filter_complex "[1:0] setsar=sar=1 [1sared]; [0:0][1sared] blend=all_mode='addition':repeatlast=1" \
test.mkv

The setsar seemed necessary as otherwise it would complain:
[Parsed_blend_0 @ 00000000043e0e40] First input link top parameters (size 1280x720, SAR 1:1) do not match the corresponding second input link bottom parameters (1280x720, SAR 0:1)

With the setsar there's no complaint, but the output video looks.. mostly pink. Both videos look fine when viewed on their own before I feed them into FFmpeg.
Any ideas? Am I doing something wrong?

I found a helpful post on stackoverflow that addresses this issue: https://stackoverflow.com/a/21400416/377875
Apparently, it's a problem with color space. Something like this works:
ffmpeg -i "$1" -i "$2" \
-filter_complex "[1:0] setsar=sar=1,format=rgba [1sared]; [0:0]format=rgba [0rgbd]; [0rgbd][1sared]blend=all_mode='addition':repeatlast=1:all_opacity=1,format=yuva422p10le" \
-c:v libx264 -preset slow -tune film -crf 19 \
-c:a aac -strict -2 -ac 2 -b:a 256k \
-pix_fmt yuv420p "$3"

(substitute $1 with your actual video, $2 with your overlay, and $3 with the output file name)


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Crop then center and zoom
My video is 1080p HD, shot with GoPro. Using GoPro Studio I have removed the fisheye effect and exported it in AVI format.
Using Pinnacle 17 (or another tool, but this one has to be free), I want to crop some part of the entire image, then zoom it (a little), then center it above another clip.
I don't know how to do this. I've tried effects in "media editor" but so far I only ended with standalone pictures.

Which version of Pinnacle Studio do you have.  If it is plus or better, you can use the same technique as covered in this answer.  Keyframe animation is the general way to accomplish this.  If you don't need it animated, it would just be a simple scale and crop operation.  I don't know where exactly the parameters are in Pinnacle studio, but they should be fairly easy unless the software is really bad.

Thanks for the idea but I found another way.

I used Picture in Picture to display my orginal video, cropped, zoomed and where I want above another picture or video.


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How to do a video live stream through a VPS?
I've been looking at a million resources and I can't find a definitive answer to this.
I'm looking to do a small scale (max 50 viewers possibly), low quality live video stream, with nothing but my existing equipment (mac and firewire camera), a low end ubuntu vps and free software. Stream from the mac and host the stream on a website on the vps.
I don't want to use services like justin.tv or ustream because the advertising is very intrusive, and I'd also like to learn how to do it myself.
I have some server admin skills, but this is a new world to me, and I can't make sense of how all the pieces fit together. I spent all night reading about rtmp, rec5, wowza, ffmpeg and now i don't understand anything at all.
Can someone give me possible workflows to piece the 3 parts together?ie, streaming from local computer, receiving in vps, broadcasting on website.

If you can use .net and wouldnt mind rtsp then check out net7mma.codeplex.com

It varies a little from one server to another, but the basic components are an encoder/streaming client on the local client that takes input from the camera and turns it in to a stream that can be sent to the stream server on the VPS.
The job of the stream server (such as Red5) is then to provide a publishing point that relays the stream to viewers.  The streaming server can either pull from the client or the client can push to a target location on the stream server in order to provide content to the publishing point.
Each viewer then connects to the published RTMP stream on the streaming server and is provided with a copy of the stream that is being uploaded.  Note that every copy has to be sent out separately unless you are on a private network where you can use multicast, so bandwidth needs rise quickly, though it should be possible to do 50 SD or lower quality streams from a single VPS provided it has a reliable 100Mbps connection.
The website simply contains a viewer that hooks up to the RTMP (or similar) stream and is actually operating client side, not server side.
So to quickly recap, client uploads to back end of streaming server, streaming server replicates out to every viewer requesting to watch it and the web server simply gives users a client side viewer that connects to the video stream.
To briefly hit on what each one of the component you mentioned.

RTMP is real time media protocol, which is a common streaming protocol used for actually relaying the video stream content.
Red5 is a fairly popular free streaming media server software used for replicating out RTMP and similar media streams to clients.
Wowza is another streaming media server software, however it is a commercial, paid software product.  If you are limited to free software, Wowza is not an option.
FFMpeg is a popular open source video encoder.  It runs on the client and can be configured to publish a stream that can be sent to Red5 or similar streaming media server.

Additionally, you will need an end-point viewer capable of consuming the stream.  Software like Windows Media Player or Quicktime should be able to view a stream, but it is often best to include an embedded cross platform player in the website that people are going to for the stream.  There are many options for this component with different strengths and weaknesses, but any should work for your purposes.

There's another free, more lightweight alternative to wowza and red5 - the nginx-rtmp-module, which frees you from messing around with java
https://github.com/arut/nginx-rtmp-module/
and here's a guide to set it up with the free Open Broadcaster Software (which unfortunately is windows only)
https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/how-to-set-up-your-own-private-rtmp-server-using-nginx.50/
For the streaming user end, the only decent free solution I've found for OSX is Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder.
So, a free and relatively lightweight pipeline for streaming from osx would be
Camtwist and Soundflower for capturing
Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder for streaming RTMP to the vps (or Open Broadcaster Software on windows)
An ubuntu vps running nginx with the nginx-rtmp-module (needs to be built from source)
Embed the stream on a website with something like JWPlayer

In addition to the mentioned Red5 and Wowza, there have been new protocols and media servers introduced in the past decade. For example, SRT/RIST is widely used in streaming and broadcasting, WebRTC/WHIP has replaced Flash for web streaming, and new codecs like H.265 and AV1 are becoming more popular. The new media server SRS supports these protocols well and works well with clients.
Streaming servers need to support various streaming protocols, such as RTMP, SRT, HLS, HTTP-FLV, WebRTC, DASH, etc. They also need to support protocol conversion, like converting RTMP to HLS or WebRTC, and WebRTC to RTMP or HLS. This is because, during streaming, OBS might use RTMP or SRT, or a web page might use WebRTC, while viewers may require HLS or WebRTC. Modern streaming servers have the capability to perform these protocol conversions.
In fact, streaming solutions not only include media servers like SRS and clients like FFmpeg, OBS, and WebRTC, but also essential features such as authentication, recording, re-streaming, and transcoding. These features require a combination of multiple open-source projects, working together with servers and clients. SRS Stack is designed to address this issue.
SRS Stack is a more suitable solution for you, which can be deployed on a VPS or started directly using Docker. You can refer to the following documentation:

How to Setup a Video Streaming Service by 1-Click
How to Publish Your SRS Livestream Through WordPress
Maximize Your Live Streaming Reach: A Guide to Multi-Platform Streaming
How to Record Live Streaming to MP4 File
Virtual Live Events: Revolutionizing the Way We Experience Entertainment
Easily Stream Your RTSP IP Camera to YouTube, Twitch, or Facebook

Streaming solutions need to support specific business scenarios. We welcome your feedback to continuously improve SRS Stack.


text:
Is it possible 3D Transform a video clip in Final Cut Pro X?
All i've ever seen in Final Cut Pro is 2D Transform on a video clip. I know you can do that in After Effects but I want to stay within Final Cut Pro X to do the 3D transform.
Is there any plugins that could allow me to set a video clip in 3D Space ?

Apple Motion will let you create "motion templates" which are usable in FCPX.  You can apply 3D transforms with Motion, and publish to Final Cut.  This approach is easy to learn, but limited in scope.

Furthermore, you can make a Motion effect and publish the 3D controls, such as the rotation around the x and y axis. Those controls will then be accessible in FCPX.


text:
Soundtrack recomendation
I'm building a 1 min tv-ad for a college assignment and I'm looking for a "crescendo" music... something like

 but not as easily recognized because I don't want to people focusing on "where have i heard that before?!?"...
Extra info: The plot for the video is a craftsman that walks into a dark room, turn the lights on, removes a sheet from his tools, and crafts a... ... ... guess what?!? piece of crap chair ("anti-climax") that falls apart by itself, and i fade to a "don't stop practicing, Bla classes for only 19,99"...

That's a pretty funny idea! If you have $50 to spend, you can get royalty-free music from audiomicro.com. Incompetech.com also has royalty-free music; I don't know how much it costs.  And if you use iMovie (which comes free with every Mac), their FREE audio library might include something you could use.  You could even splice together several songs into one to get the effect you want.


text:
What is the Name of this effect
http://vimeo.com/86969394
I like to know how to do this effect but I don't know what is the term/name for it. The video above around 10 - 12 seconds in with how the title seems fixed to a point in the video despite movement of the camera.
There is also a similar effect if you had watched House of Cards the parts where they are displaying sms messages where the text appears above their phones and moves a bit according to it.
It would be okay to just give me the name of the effect ... I'll do the rest searching for tutorial in YouTube. But a instruction video would also be nice.
Thanks.

Looks like text moving to a "Motion Tracking" effect.
Basically it finds and follows 1 or more points in a picture then moves the text accordingly.
If you use 2 or more points you can track the 3d angle also.
Examples:
2D position only

3D position, scale and angle


text:
Chromakey (Green Screen) Best Practices in Adobe After Effects
I've been doing green screen in iMovie (and it works surprisingly well!), but I'm downloading Adobe Creative Cloud tonight for my new PC. I'd appreciate any "best practice" suggestions for using the After Effects chromakey features, particularly with green-screen (rather than blue).
BTW, I'm trying After Effects because iMovie was having a problem with my actress's blue eyes and blonde hair, both of which became partially transparent.  (I think the scene was lit fine, so her hair shouldn't have had green reflecting off of it.)

Assuming the lighting is solid, you should be in good shape. I haven't used the keying features of iMovie, but I can give you a few tips for After Effects. I'll defer to any power users of AE's keying functionality to chime in with more specific advice.
First, you'll probably want to start with the Keylight plugin (from The Foundry). It should come bundled with After Effects Creative Cloud. There are tons of tutorials, guides, etc. for Keylight on the web.
Second, know that you can create masks with After Effects. Not sure if you're already familiar with them, but masks are custom shapes that allow for specific areas of footage to be visible or modified. Masks allow you to create a "junk matte" around your subject, which can be helpful if lighting gets a little uneven or equipment is visible on the edge of the shot. Masks could also allow you to preserve the actor's eyes so that they are not being keyed (especially if the shot is relatively static). For example, you might want to duplicate the main video layer, mask around the actor's eyes, then pull the key on the duplicated background layer.
Third, if you're still having problems with the hair after firing up Keylight, you'll want to look into the "Despill Bias" option. With despill bias, you'll basically select a skin color to reduce the blue / green bleeding. It might take a little trial and error.

Sounds good to me! Thanks. I'm going to look into traveling mattes as well, since some of the shots are pretty active. (It's a parody of Avril Lavigne's "Hello Kitty" music video, so there's dancing and bouncing around.)

After Effects has quite sophisticated automated 3d camera tracking since CS6 and the old 2D position object tracker is also still doing a fairly okay job for these sort of things.


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How to find video frame rate and resolution
I was watching a video produced by local movie maker, on 13" MacBook and it has lines! not sure why. I was thinking maybe the movie has rendered badly. How do I find out what's the resolution and frame rate.

The lines may come from the fact that you have exported the video with interlacing. You should generally avoid interlacing for any digital end-user medium.
To find out about certain technical aspects of a video, the program MediaInfo is a very handy tool that can tell you a lot about the specs of your video, including basics like video resolution and framerate. Though it's very unlikely that the root of your issue is the framerate or resolution. Medianinfo can also tell you if a video is using interlacing which is more likely the cause.

Thanks, it says 720*576. Is it low res?

That sounds like it is 576i pal resolution which is an old SD format and most likely interlaced.  If the source video is that quality, you won't be able to increase the quality any, but you can have it output de-interlaced video (ie, progressive) which should play back better in video players that don't have good quality de-interlacing built in.


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adjusting the Premiere Creative Cloud sequence (newbie question)
I just downloaded Premiere CC and am learning to use it. There's a big section in the sequence (I think that's what it's called?) that I'd like to get rid of.  In the screen shot below, I marked it with the white arrow.

As you can see, my footage is a little over 2 minutes long.  However, the area I can scroll is over 12 minutes long.  How can I make the scrollable area a similar length as my footage?  I want to do that so the scroll bar isn't super-sensitive (and there's not ten useless minutes of empty space in that window). BTW, I know how to "zoom in" on that timeline. But then if you move the scroll bar a couple pixels, you've jumped several "screens" one way or the other.
Thanks!

Possibly related... http://video.stackexchange.com/questions/9933/why-is-my-premiere-timeline-scrollbar-thumb-non-proportional though it doesn't have a good answer either.

@AJHenderson Yeah, that question looks almost identical. It's for an earlier version of Premiere but I guess the functionality is the same on their latest release. (That other question didn't have an answer / solution, for what it's worth.)

From what I can gather online, it appears that it is supposed to scale automatically and always extends 10 minutes beyond the end of the last clip in the sequence and there does not appear to be any way to change that.

Wow ... that would be terrible. I'm an interface designer, and that's not what I'd call a good interface. Seems that there should be a setting where you get to choose how many minutes (1? 5? 10?) you want it to extend.  Thanks for the research! My own searches didn't turn up that info.

You know, it isn't a great design, but it's also something I've never noticed until people mentioned it here.  Generally, when you are working with a project, either you have the whole thing in view or 10 minutes of extra space doesn't really make a big difference.  Does seem silly you can't tweak it though.

Its not the worst thing in the world. It just makes the horizontal scroll bar too sensitive.


text:
Convert .WMV to .MOV
A client gave me a file in Windows Media Video format. I need to edit it in Final Cut Pro X. The problem is that Final Cut Pro X can't read it. Neither can Apple Compressor. It has a Quicktime logo, suggesting that Quicktime can open it, but Quicktime cannot.

I'd be interested to hear alternate solutions, although my answer worked.

I can recommend Adapter.
It is a Wrapper for the ffmpeg package and does its job pretty well. Because of its easy UI.
You could also use ffmpeg directly via macports, but I think that Adapter is far easier to control.

8 months later I faced the same issue on a new Mac. Adapter was so much simpler and easier than Flip4Mac. However, it only had an option to convert to .MP4, not .MOV, so I guess the answer to the original question is still Flip4Mac. However, +1 for solving the problem.

@NathanLucy Might be better, accepting this question.

@poor Yep. I confirmed Adapter works on my Mac running 10.10 Yosemite.

The good news is I didn't just overlook something. Transcoding .WMV to .MOV is a real problem. The bad news is that it cost me $29 to solve it. I purchased the "Player Pro" license for Flip4Mac by Telestream after reading this support article by Apple.

Cheer up! There are many $600+ programs that can do that too.

Note that if you have a PC available, it is near trivial to go from WMV to MOV on a PC.  I guess it is a bit harder on a Mac though.


text:
In video, can previous frames effect results seen in subsequent shots?
While watch a shot on YouTube at .25 normal speed, I noticed two distinct images of the rocket fired at the ship from (25-26s).
Is this an effect of the video, the film, or the result of a video that was filmed at regular speed with a regular camera and watching at .25 speed? My question is why is the missile visible in two different frames?
Link to the video: Missile YouTube

At a certain time you can see the rocket at two places at the same time.

What you are seeing has nothing to do with compression artifacts, but is frame-blending due to the slow motion effect applied (in the video)
Let's say the video is recorded at 30 frames per second. You only have 30 'pictures' per second to capture the information. If you want to slow the video down (to be able to see the rocket more slowly) you could play these frames back at a lower speed, let's say 15fps. Each frame will be visible twice as long as when playing back at 30fps. (you could also duplicate all the frames, and play them back at 30fps to have the same effect). The footage will kind of look jittery when doing this, like it is stuttering to continue, which is not nice.
Instead of just adding copies of the already existing frames, extra frames are calculated in between. The easiest way is to just calculate the average between the frame before and the frame after. This way all your frames will have different visual content and it will be a little more pleasant to the eye. The fact that you are seeing two rockets, is due to this averaging.

(source: apple.com)
There are other possibilities to generate new frames. Software like twixtor does some advanced calculations and will (try to) guess the rockets position on the frames in between. If configured correctly this is even more pleasant for the eye than the averaging method.
The obvious solution would be to shoot these kind of shots with a high framerate. If you shoot video at, let's say 1000 fps, you can slow it down to 30fps (33 times slower) without having to calculate values from in-between frames.
These artifacts are probably coming from the original video itself, because if you watch closely you can also see it at the original speed. But it's always possible that youtube also uses averaging for it's slowdown feature, so that these artifacts are introduced by the player.

This type of problem is usually a side effect of the type of compression used. In order to minimise the bandwidth requirements, frames are simplified, reusing content from previous frames etc. And this can cause interesting video effects when key (whole) frames are corrupted or missed.

It could also be caused by interlaced source material, where half the image is recorded at a time. Fast-moving objects would be recorded in two different locations. When the interlaced signal is converted to progressive, the two fields are merged to create one frame with two rockets.
However, given that there don't appear to be other interlacing artifacts, I don't think that's what's happening here.


text:
Terminology connected with camera movement
As non-English speaker, the terms connected with camera movement are not always clear to me, and I believe that they are technical enough to be confusing even for some English speakers.
Please write what are the terms (eg. pan, tilt), what they mean and what is that specific movement used for while shooting.

For the three main rotations of the camera you have pan (rotation around the vertical axis), tilt (rotation around the axis passing left to right through the camera), roll (rotation through the axis passing through the center of the lens).
Then there are the three main movements along those same axis.  Pedestal is a movement along the vertical axis.  Tracking, trucking and dolly shots are all roughly synonymous and refer to moving the camera along either horizontal axis (or both).  Tracking generally involves maintaining a constant distance from the subject.
A crane shot is a shot where the camera is on the end of a boom that is being rotated around one or more axis.  In other words, the camera is moving around the outside of a sphere created by a boom mounted on a central point.
Follow shot is a shot that follows a subject at a set distance as they move.  Ie, the subject remains roughly stationary in frame but the rest of the surroundings move.
Dolly Zoom isn't exactly a specific kind of camera movement, but it involves doing a dolly shot at the same time as adjusting the zoom to keep the subject the same size.  This results in an exaggerated perspective shift while the subject remains the same size or roughly the same size.

Wow! Nice summary, AJ!

Ditto Ditto Ditto (must have minimum number of characters.)


text:
Why more than 10 FPS is needed
As we know that out brain can process at most 1/10th of a second then why we go beyond the 10 FPS as our brain should not be able to process more than the 10 FPS of a scene. whats is the logic behind ?

Just a little fun fact: the brain CAN process more than 10 FPS. Even the difference between 30 and 60 FPS is pretty clear. http://30vs60.com/

I concur.  When I was taking a senior-level computer graphics class in college, we were taught that the human eye starts to blur images at around 20 FPS, and it isn't until about 60 that you really start running into the limit for practical intents.  The convention in the software industry is basically 15-60, and when I've tested software running at 15, I could always see the choppiness that 15 FPS presented.

Linus can tell the difference between a refresh rate of 60Hz and 120Hz.

The brain can process an image displayed for as little as 13 ms if the surrounding content is blank.  10 to 12 images per second is only the number of images that appear distinct to the eye.  Beyond 10 to 12 images a second,  the brain starts to try to piece them together, but it is doing a lot of work to make that go and the motion isn't as smooth as it could be.
Using higher frame rates means that the brain has to do less filling in the gaps and motion can appear more accurate and smoother since the brain is actually fully capable of processing images faster than 10 times a second.
The 12fps animation threshold is only a minimum to get the appearance of motion, not the maximum amount of information our brain can take in.  We can process far more images per second to determine motion, but require at least 10 to 12.
You can test this for yourself if you want by taking a 30 fps video and inserting a black frame at random in the video.  You'll easily notice the distortion from the missed frame because it abruptly changes to something other than the expected image.
Basically your brain knows what it expects to see and can recognize that it didn't see what it expected, it just can't recall exactly what it is that it saw that it didn't expect since it was taking a shortcut to reduce the amount of processing needed.
The Wikipedia article on frame rate is a good source of additional information on the topic.

The logic of experience. All you have to do is watch 10fps or even 20fps video to realize that what you "know" to be true of the brain is wrong. Persistence of vision in the average human dictates a refresh rate of > 25fps to avoid apparent flicker.
The human visual system involves more than just what the brain can completely process.

If a person is shown consecutive pictures of a featureless circle at various places on a screen, the person may perceive independent circles appearing and disappearing, one circle which is making discrete (jerky) motions, or one circle which is moving smoothly.  Which perception dominates will be a function of both the rate at which the screens are shown and the ratio of the circle's size to the distance it moves between frames.  The higher the frame rate and the less the circle moves between frames, the less opportunity there will be for the eye or the brain to notice any difference between what a smoothly-moving circle would do and what the observed image is actually doing.
If one goes beyond a featureless circle to more detailed objects, the analysis will become more complicated, but largely boil down to a key observation: the amount by which an object can move between consecutive frames without appearing jerky will correlate strongly with the size of the object's dominant features.  A 12fps or even 8fps rate is adequate when showing blurry objects, but even 30fps may be inadequate when the features of an object appear at substantially-non-overlapping positions on consecutive frames.
Incidentally, showing black between frames, rather than changing directly from one image to the next, will often improve the perceived smoothness of motion, but (except at high frame rates) at the expense of introducing flicker.  Essentially, during the time the image is black neither the brain nor the eye will be able to see anything that would be inconsistent with continuous motion.


text:
How do I temporarily disable Davinci Resolve nodes?
I'm new to Resolve (free version). As a programmer I kind of assumed that unconnected nodes, being unconnected, wouldn't interact with the process in any way. Apparently I was wrong.
What I'm trying to do here is find out an easy way to try out a completely different approach to grading the clip without losing the previous settings.
In the screenshot:
3 isolated nodes containing the previous grading and 1 new node for trying out alternative grading. Even though the new node has very visible adjustments, I only see the original clip in preview.
I also tried removing all the previous nodes. Only then the new node begins to work, and as soon as I add another node that is of course initially unconnected, the preview returns to the clip's default state.

⌘-D will disable the currently selected node.  Resolve really doesn't like to have loose nodes floating around, so either disable them, or delete them.  But since you're talking about creating a new, experimental node structure, what you really want to do is create a new local version.  Right click on the clip thumbnail and select Local versions-> create new version.  This basically creates a copy of your node structure that you can return to whenever you like.  After issuing the command, you'll see that the name of the new version appears under the thumbnail to let you know which one you're working on.  To revert to the original (or select from any number of alternate versions), right click the thumbnail again and choose versionName->Load.

Deleted my previous comments asking how to disable nodes even though that was the first thing in your answer. No idea how I failed to notice it :) Also, clicking on the number below node toggles the state.


text:
Resynchronize Audio to Video
When I have audio and video tracks de-synchronized, is there a way to make them synchronous?
A workflow:

Add a video+audio track to a project;
Crop a small Event in the middle and remove the rest;
Uncheck Ignore event grouping option;
Drag one of the tracks sideways;
Note the audio track gets reddish background to indicate it is not synced to Video.
Resize Video and/or Audio Events so that original start/end timestamps get lost;

Now I need to get Audio synced back to Video.
Obviously, dragging Video or Audio will not work as I have resized both Events individually.
How to get Audio back in sync, probably by losing cropping?
I'm aware about opening the Event in the Trimmer and re-dragging the Audio track from there.

I use Sync Audio to Video command from Vegasaur toolkit. Note that this third-party extension is not free.

@altarvic Thanks for a suggestion. Please consider turning your comment into an answer so that others can upvote it; just make sure you notice that Vegasaur is a separate commercial product.

can Vegas set markers? If so set an audio marker and video marker before the desynching

@KvdLingen Thanks, but it will not work. Markers are tied to project's timeline, not to individual Events.

This does it for me (see the screenshots):

Set the cursor to the beginning of the audio event.
Drag the beginning of the audio event with the mouse to the beginning of the original clip (note: the cursor is still positioned at the cropped beginning) (screenshot 2)
Cut the audio event at cursor position (press S)
Repeat step 1 to 3 with the video event (screenshot 3)
Now you can easily synchronize video and audio by aligning the events (screenshot 4)
Delete the beginnings. (screenshot 5)


text:
Which software application did they use to create LHC data processing animation?
I would like to know which software application did CERN use to create the LHC data processing animation?

I have some ideas for demo 3D animations and would like to follow the style used by LHC video.
Thank you!

This can be achieved with almost any 3D suites out there.
Your options are 3Ds Studio Max, Cinema 4D, Blender (free and open source), Maya, Lightwave etc. etc.
These are all software suites that enable you to model, animate and render videos like this one.
Ontop of that they used a 2D animation software like After Effects for scenes like the earth overview animation at second 251.
Though the 3D scenes are very likely one single render without much post processing (except for the text overlay).
The style is simple, you have a rather flat shading without much reflections with Ambient Occlusion turned up a notch to get these shadows in the corners.
Going by these particle effects I'm rather convinced that they used Cinema 4D for the 3D animations, though they could have also made those with After Effects and a plugin called Particular from RedGiant Software, a very popular tool for particle animations.
Though Cinema 4D is very popular for motion graphic animations like this one, so it's likely they used that.

Thanks Professor! I will check out all the tools you mentioned.


text:
Slowing down video vs higher framerate recording
What is the difference between slowing down the video in software compared to actual shooting at higher framerate?
For example, i have a camera that shoots at 60fps and want to slow it down to achieve the same effect as when shooting at 120fps. What would be the differences?

Related but not quite the same... http://video.stackexchange.com/questions/10632/handling-frame-rate-for-movies-with-slow-motion

A computer can not magically generate information out of nothing.

By shooting at higher frame rate, you can achieve great looking and frame accurate slow motion. Interpolation is not going to happen. But if you want to slow down your footage beyond the frames you have, you can use the right tools in your video editor, or Twixtor plugin, but of course it will not give you as good results as a dedicated high speed camera. Absent frames are digitally interpolated. There are some more affordable Twixtor alternatives, such as Respeeder. These tools will give your video a smooth, high-frame rate look.


text:
Title not updating after creation in premiere pro
I'm having this strange issue where I have created a title and when I try to update it (position or stroke) nothing happens. Either on or off the timeline, the title stays in its original position (off center) and it won't apply my changes.
Any ideas what could be causing this?
I'm running PP CC

A simple restart did the trick.

Welcome to Video Production. Glad you figured it out.  Thanks for posting your solution.

Delayed reply but I just had the same issue. I found that toggling the roll/crawl options on and off triggered Premiere back into normal behaviour. This saves having to restart your project.

There are several ways. I used one that was super practical but I don't remember it anymore. So now I reseting the workspace to default:
window -- workspace -- reset current workspace
This is not the best way, but if you don't have a great number of titles to edit, it might work fine.

Delete the file "workingset" in C:\Users\Username\Documents\Adobe\Premiere Pro\6.0\Styles
It has helped me with different Title proplems, including this updating thing.