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Why do higher frame rates require lower resolution?
I've noticed that when comparing video camera specifications, higher frame rates usually require a lowered resolution.  For example, the GoPro Hero4 Silver can get 15fps at 4k, 60fps at 1080p, 120fps at 720p, and 240fps at vga.  I would think that the resolution of the individual frames would be independent of the rate of capture.  Is this because of bitrate capabilities of internal cables, or an encoding limit on the internal circuitry?  Thanks for your help.

I am not an engineer, but I think you've answered your own question.
This is a bit of an oversimplification, but if t is the time it takes to record, process and store a pixel from a frame consisting of p pixels, then 1/(t * p) is your maximum frame rate. So if you increase the framerate above the maximum you need to decrease either t or p. And since t is fixed you have to decrease p - the number of pixels.


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Premiere CC 2015 and DVD conversion audio sync issue
Years ago, I transferred a video tape of a live band performance to DVD (using a Sony VHS/DVD RW machine that I no longer own). Yesterday, I edited an 8-minute clip from the DVD. The audio/video sync appeared fine inside Premiere, but when I exported to YouTube, the audio and video are completely out of sync.
(I didn't touch the alignment of either audio or video tracks while editing)
All I did was add titles to the beginning and end.
How can I prevent this from happening in the future?

When you say completely out of sync -- by how much? Do they start out of sync and stay the same, or do they start in sync and drift out, or something else? Do the titles you added have an associated audio track (even if it's silent)?

titles have no audio track. Looking at my local copy of the rendered video, it appears that perhaps the audio track got moved to the beginning (i.e. filling in the blank space "under" the title). it's seconds ahead of the video. I'm a casual user of Premiere and I could have clicked a ripple edit tool by accident. Hmmm.

Based on your comment feedback, and as I suspected, it looks as if the main audio has 'slipped under' the new title video. An easy way to avoid this is to marry the titles with a silent audio track.

Thank you. Going forward I'll add that to my "best practices"

Make sure your video has the same fps as the original video, usually it's 25/29fps. It could also be the format that you're exporting it to.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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How do I get screen captures from VLC to import properly into Premiere?
I recorded my screen in VLC, and I saved that file as an .mp4 on my desktop. I can open and play the recording just fine, but I can't seem to import it properly into Premiere. Have you ever seen this error before?

Looks like a codec that Premiere is unable to read.
I encountered a similar issue with Final Cut when trying to import an MP4 file encoded with H264.  Then came across this advice:  "H.264 is a delivery format, not a production format. You need to convert the media into a suitable format. What that is depends on what the files are and what their frame size is." https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/986671
So if you can't recapture with a suitable codec, you'll have to decompress your H264 MP4 file into something Premiere can import.

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


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fix a few videos with bad white balance?
I have a few video that i made with my olympus though and i made the mistake of not setting my white balance to sunny (or auto)
it was set to incandescent while being outdoor scenes.
now I got a few blueish videos
what is the best way to fix this?
can it be done with a free / opensource product?

Hello. While this seems to be an easy task, and there are some useful open source software which can help you to achieve it, it's good to know which operating system are you going to use. Some of them are Linux only software or they do a better job when natively working on Linux. Please let us know what is your OS in order to provide some help. Thank you!

@GeppettvsD'Constanzo it can be windows or linux, i'm using both at home

@Fredou did you ever find your answer?

@Alex yes, I had to do it quickly so I used the way that i found, virtualdub + avisynth + ColorYUV(autowhite=true)

I have used virtualdub with avisynth ColorYUV(autowhite=true)
it seem to have done an "ok" job

On a Windows Based System you can use the Sony Vegas PRO and Sony Vegas Movie Studio, which has several plugins which you can apply in a per-track and/or per-event basis.
The "per-track" option may allow you to place a bunch of video clips in the same track on your timeline so that the same color correction preset or customised parameters will be applied to every event in the timeline, after which you can run individual rendering for each instance or a finished one-clip movie made with all the events.
The next links provides a quick view on certain useful plugins and their corresponding usage for such tasks. Remember that the same plugins may appear in both the Movie Studio and the Professional edition of Sony Vegas if the installation for both software was made using the same Shared Folder for Plugins.

Easy color correction and white balance in Sony Vegas Movie Studio

Sony Vegas Pro Tutorial / white balance using NEW BLUE color fixer plus

If you are using a Linux based distribution you have good chances to try KDENlive, which says it can do color correction like the one shown in the next video/picture:

Kdenlive Effects - White Balance

I have made some color correction in the past, both with Sony Vegas and KDENlive but I can't provide at this very moment some personal illustrations, so I got some from the web.
The same as in Sony Vegas, KDENlive will allow you to do this task for a per-track/event basis.
Good luck!

It can be, basically you need a program with some sort of color corrector. In Premiere its called the three-way color corrector/fast color corrector, in vegas, its secondary color corrector I believe.
In PP, using three-way color corrector/fast color corrector, all you have to do is select an area that should be white in the frame using 'white level' and it will figure it out for you. Alternatively, you can go to the midtones section, and drag the color pin in the opposite direction. So for you, the video is too blueish, and thus you need to add some warmth or yellow/orange.

The above is a picture from Sony's color corrector (same principles apply as in PP). Basically, in the 'mid' section (its always the center color wheel), you want to move the dot between the Red and the Yellow areas or between 90 deg and 180 deg until you feel you have compensated enough for the white balance mistake. Bare in mind, if the white balance is really off, this will also change the dynamics of the other colors and may look weird, so experiment with the highs and lows as well by compensating for this effect.
You can use rgb scopes and vectorscopes to determine if you are doing things correctly. In your case you have a spike in the blues right now, and not enough red, so the closer those spikes get to each other within reason the better.
If you have skintones this can be complicated. But generally, you want the vectorscope to show a line of 'data' around 120 degrees (the skin tone line - seen below).


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Taking video from a DVD & Making it Editable
I'm fairly familiar with Adobe Premier... done a few small projects in it.  Recently my father-in-law gave me a corporate training video, on DVD, that was done for his company back in 2008.  The people that did the video are no longer available.  He asked me to make a few edits. I'm not sure how to extract the video from the DVD and import it into Premier.  When I look at the DVD in the finder (Mac OS), this is what I see...

Any ideas?

VTS_01_1.VOB through VTS01_5.VOB is the video itself. It's in 5 files because the DVD spec requires the files be no larger than 1GiB. Try loading those files in Premiere.

Yeah that was the first thing I tried.  No luck.  Premier would not recognize the files.  I ended up spending $30 on some software to rip DVD's.  Worked great!

I ended up spending $30 to buy MacX DVD Ripper.  Worked great. Easily converted the video files on the DVD to an MP4 file, which loaded right into Premier.

Well, I'd suggest the next option would have been to download ffmpeg for Mac and remux the VOBs into a MPEG PS container. There's no recompression that way and it's much quicker.

A musician family member who edited video on his Apple PowerBook G4, swore by Handbrake. Handbrake is now available cross platform OSX, Linux, and Windows (through Windows 10). Much this musician's work in later years was ripping and repackaging DVD footage - and what he particularly liked was that Handbrake was "bulletproof." It even ripped mini-DVD AVCHD video from my Panasonic hand-held, before we were calling it H.264. Downloads available here: Handbrake Downloads

Adapter is another free video encoding application. It's a GUI wrapper for ffmpeg.

Link to adapter: https://www.macroplant.com/adapter/download/mac/


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ffmpeg encoded videos are not playing on mobile browser
I have set up a server to upload and play videos. I used django/python as the scripting language, and nginx and gunicorn as the webserver. I am using videojs as the video player.
For h264 mp4 I tried this command:
ffmpeg -i inputfile.avi -codec:v libx264 -profile:v baseline -preset slow -b:v 250k -maxrate 250k -bufsize 500k -vf scale=-1:360 -threads 0 -codec:a libfdk_aac -movflags +faststart output.mp4

But its only playing on desktop browsers and not on mobile browsers (except only on firefox android browser).
Here are some points that I gathered along the way:

Some of the videos which I downloaded from youtube and uploaded it on the server without encoding are playing nicely on all the browsers.
However if I encode the same video (youtube video) and upload it on the server, it does not play on the mobile devices but only on desktop browsers.
Videos which I took from my mobile (samsung s4 and iphone 6), and encode it with ffmpeg are not playing on the mobile browsers, only on desktop browsers.
But, the url of the same videos (which I took from mobile) which are hosted on amazon s3 are playing nicely on all the browsers (even the non encoded videos).

What am I missing? I was really hoping if you could guide me and help me to solve the problem. Thank you.

Unfortunately due to patent/licensing issues1, MP4 playback is not supported natively in all browsers. That's where file format redundancy comes into play; if one file format is not able to be natively loaded by a system a backup version may be able to work.
I have found that certain browsers will be able to run files encoded with the .webm container using VP8 plus Vorbis for audio and video, respectively, out of the box while using HTML5 players.2
Citations

1 https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Supported_media_formats#Browser_compatibility
2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video#Multiple_sources

Doesn't seem to be that issue as non-encoded videos are playing fine, and if those videos were uniformly non-MP4, the OP would have noticed.

See Browser Compatibility section here https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Supported_media_formats


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Is Blue screen a better choice than Green when shooting outdoor to reserve shadows?
I'm going to use Green screen on the floor in a sunny day outdoor shot.
With the shadows of characters reserved, I'm going to change the Green screen background to a stony texture.
I've found in some resources that for an outdoor shoot the Blue is a better option. But still I'm not sure. Any assurance?

Blue screen was mostly used for film work, because the high contrast film they used to do the alpha mask was sensitive only to blue light. Video, including digital video has most resolution in the green channel, so green screen works best with video.

With a good keyer it doesn't matter as much as it may have in the past, but in most cases green is the better choice. Which you choose depends more on where and with what content you do your keying. If you're using equal-band capture, recording and processing -- 4:4:4 for instance -- then it can be a tossup. But any encoding that limits chroma bandwidth -- 4:2:0, 4:1:1 etc, will favor green because there's more green in the highest bandwidth channel (luma consists of more than 50% green). More resolution + less noise = better keying.
I think using blue outdoors might be favored because natural light is much bluer than typical studio lighting, which reduces the noise in the blue signal. But I doubt there's a significant advantage, because noise is only one factor.

Great answer! But it also depends on the shot, when shooting in a forest, it might be better using blue screen.


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How do I create this slide/bouncy effect in After Effects?
The news channel in my country is using a nice bouncy/slide effect. Now I'm trying to recreate that in After Effects. I tried many effects and expressions, Googled a lot and watched many tutorials. But none fit to my expecting result.
Does someone know how to recreate those effects? With expressions or maybe a nice plugin?

Look very close to the end of the bar. Its bouncing a little bit.

Key is creating 2 additional keyframes after the last one (one copy of the last one 5-10 frames ahead and another one in between). The keyframe in between is for shifting the position slightly into the opposite direction. In order to get a non linear animation ease all the keyframes at the end.

Instructions

Create a new composition and a new solid layer with the dimensions of the gauge
Click the solid layer and create a mask (double click the rectangular mask path icon to create new mask with the dimensions of the solid layer)
Open up the mask properties of the solid / gauge layer MM
Go to the end of the composition and add a keyframe by clicking on the stop watch of the mask path property
Go to the first frame of the composition and drag both right mask bezier points to the left (this will automatically insert a new keyframe)
Copy the last keyframe 5-10 frames ahead and another one in between
With the cursor on the keyframe in between, drag both bezier points on the right side of the rectangle slightly to the left
Select the last 3 keyframes
Right Click > Keyframe Assistant > Easy Ease or simply hit F9

Examples
Bounce to the right

Bounce to the left

Project File Download

The update is great! The only thing that would be nice is that I can put this effect on every solid with it's own width. Thats the reason why I thought about expressions. But I guess that would not be possible, and I just have to play with the keyframes?

@user3625118 How many gauges do you really need? If you need 100+ different ones, it makes sense to create a script for this, but that's another question :)

Well the thing is. The solid's width is depending on how many characters are coming on it. I do change the width by hand.

Uhh, don't think this is easy possible, but as I said it's not that hard to create this setup in 30seconds :) The only thing you have to adjust is the mask path. Set the new comp size, click the gauge layer > right click > fit to comp size and adjust the right bezier points one time.

Thank you very much (Danke shön)! It's working great :) I just have to play a bit with the keyframes. Thats okay.

haha, almost forgot

There's a good tutorial on how to script this with expressions here: http://www.motionscript.com/articles/bounce-and-overshoot.html


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Video Splitting
I am working on a project to create trailers for some footage that we are given, (approx. 2.3 hrs long) and was wondering what was the best way to go through the footage and take out small splits for me to use later. My goal is to harvest as many small segments as possible for each main scene and run them by my colleagues to see which ones best articulate the film. I am working on a Mac and have access to most video editing softwares though I could not find a way to split the footage into segments and save them all as individual files. Is there some trick that I don't know of or a software that expediates the process, since there would be numerous clips (ie. a batch way of saving them all)? Thanks

Premiere pro supports the creation of "subclips" which are smaller clips as you describe.
You can then show them to your team from inside premiere or render them to individual videos with the adobe encoder utility.

Thanks, I'm new to the whole stack-overflow system and am learning etiquette here haha, sorry for such a late response


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Create middle lined mask in vector shape
I have a Illustrator vector shape (It has a shape path around it). But I need a mask line in the middle of the shape. The problem with with doing it by drawing a shape line over it is that I can't get the corners right.
I want to use the middle lined mask to do animations with.

Is there an easy way to achieve this?

related: http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/49643/how-to-use-after-effects-trim-path-with-an-illustrator-path/49975#49975

I knew that link already :) I used that for the animating part.

In Photoshop (or Illustrator), in a new layer above the vector shape, create a solid shape of the mask you want (with rounded corners). Export that layer alone as an image and import into AE.
Use auto-trace to create a mask from it. See https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/creating-shapes-masks.html#create_a_mask_from_channel_values_with_auto_trace


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Making a simple animated template for frequent slight changes
I've made an example version of a news video in After Effects that we will be altering weekly. The template might be used by less skilled people and I'd like to know what (if there are) ways to make it easier to customize it later and how could I do that.
Now the shape has its position and scale keyframed and the clips have their position keyframed. Maybe putting them in a "film reel" and just moving their parent would be more convenient (the idea came while writing here). Weekly we will need to change the number and duration of clips and title size and position. I not afraid to get into coding expressions or something else - maybe it's possible to simplify the process that way somehow?
The project is pretty simple:

Clips with push transition (like the one you can easily do in
Premiere)
Blurred area with varying size titles for each clip
A white shape indicating current title (text overlaping with the shape turns black)

The shape moves down as the clips change.
Here are 3 screenshots transitioning from a smaller title to a big one:

I would take a learning from templates on videohive. Pre-comp all the text layers and put them in a separate organized folder in the project. This way if they have to edit the after effects file its just a matter of changing the text in the precomped layers. With that being said, I guarantee that you will never have on a week to week basis the same size text layer as there are always more or less characters per word .etc. So you might have to implement some expressions to make boxes increase in height with regards to the text layer.
If you put your text layers in a bounding box this fixes the horizontal width issue, but the height length will have to be figured out.
That being said, once its setup, I know that AE CC 2015 when imported into PP CC 2015 allows for users to edit the text from AE inside of PP which is quite useful in your situation where the users may not have that much AE knowledge.


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How to create TS files from pictures and videos?
I have many videos and pictures. I'd like to burn DVD with pictures and videos and play in DVD Player.
And I want to make cml tool to prepare pictures and videos for creating DVD. I know how I burn dvd from video_ts folder, but not how I create video_ts folder with pictures and videos.
1.Can I write pictures and videos to Video-DVD?
2. How to create video_ts files with pictures and videos?
3. To prepare pictures and videos for writing dvd, how should I do?

You can use the free DVDStyler to create DVDs.
It should also be possible to include photo slideshows, although I didn't test that.

Is there no way to make TS files in command line?

DVDStyler uses ffmpeg under the hood and even displays the ffmpeg commands it generates. You could create a sample project and copy those commands into your batch file. But there is one reason why I switched from command line ffmpeg to DVDStyler: with ffmpeg I spent hours finding the best quality/file size setting, but with DVDStyler it's calculated for you.


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How to render on another computer using Adobe Media Encoder CC
I use a macbook air (1,7Ghz i7, 8gb RAM) to edit my Premiere projects. Rendering blows CPU to the max. I also have a MacMini fileserver (2,6Ghz i5, 8gb RAM) which could be used for rendering jobs.
Is it possible to allocate rendering jobs from Premiere Pro CC on my Macbook Air to the MacMini?

No, not from one computer to another, you'd have to copy the project files onto a server, NAS device, or external HDD and then load it on the MacMini. You cannot from your Air directly say hey PP on the MacMini let's do this unfortunately.
Now, one option would be network rendering. The thing about it is, both computers are required to have exactly the same project files which means it has to be hosted on a server or some sort of NAS device (costly, and won't benefit your setup that much), some frames get rendered on one, while frames get rendered on the other (both computers will be actively involved, so most likely you couldn't work on other projects).
PP does not support network rendering, so the file PP CC file would have to be imported to After Effects.

Thank you for your answer :) now I know what to do and what not to do.


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Do talent show programmes film lots of footage or is it set up?
I keep watching auditions from talent shows. It seems like they have an interview process before each audition and apparently 'randomly' select them before they even enter the arena to do the audition.
Do the crews just film lots of footage of every freaking contestant (HD, 1 minute per contestant avg., hundreds of contestants) or do they do a process before-hand of deciding who will end up on the final cut (entertainment value ).
Surely if all the contestants have interviews where seemingly 'random' questions that reveal information on their backstories that would take up a lot of storage and be a real pain for the teams who have to edit it all together for the TV cut?
I know for a fact that they interview each contestant before hand (not always filmed - I think) so that the judges know what questions to ask the contestants (example: "is this a cover song or are you a songwriter" - contestant before hand said they were a songwriting, "what do you cuirrently do" - contestant is on show to escape menial, obscure, job).
I'm not sure if this is the right stackexchange site but it seems close enough.
tl;dr - Do talent show (audition based entertainment) programmes film lots of footage of each contestant in a hope that the contestant is entertaining (like interview before audition - outside arena - cliché shots of the contestants sitting around looking nervous) or do they have a huge process of selecting out acts that have entertainment value (based on some form of prerequisite audition tape or whatever) and then only selecting them?
This is a question I ponder every time I watch these shows.
I have a feeling the answer is a lot simpler than the ideas I've proposed here.

prolly they have a live editor that selects parts to keep using some sort of buffer, otherwise the process in the final editing room would be wayyy to time consuming even for 10 editors. just my guess.

I've shot live events for the past 5 years, and had a few friends get on (and actually pretty far in) both American Idol and The Voice. There is a series of auditions way before contestants ever get in front of a studio camera, let alone a TV audience. Most auditions are not filmed, unless it is recorded by the casting directors/producers purely for their reference, usually with a simple handycam.
Yes, some auditions are staged a certain way, but not usually scripted. The nervous shots and emotional cut-aways you mentioned are almost always staged, shot after the fact, and then edited in a way that lets the audience project meaning onto the shot. The exception of course being when producers know a big event is about to take place (e.g. put a cameraman in the green room right before the contestant goes on stage.)
At this point it becomes a matter of efficiently handling your media so producers can quickly call up a shot that, even if they haven't seen it yet, they know it exists. That's why digital intermediates on set are worth their weight in gold for "reality" TV shows.
If it's a live show, there are many cameramen all wearing earpieces, ready to take direction from producers on who/what to cover and when. Then you have a big team of people behind the scenes watching what every camera sees and punching up the appropriate shots to the audience. So in this sense only, yes they just shoot a bunch of footage. But a live streaming video is a bit different than recording to hard disc.

My best guess would be that it's a bit of a combination of both. For shows like America's Got Talent (and, I'm sure, other "Got Talent" shows), the acts go through a "Producer's Audition" before anyone gets to see the real judges. The producers filter out a majority of the applicants and send a small number through to be shown on TV. My assumption is that during the producer auditions, the producers figure out which acts would be good to interview for the TV show.


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Moving keyframes with duration change
I have a still image with four opacity keyframes which look like this:

When I change the duration my keyframes stay at the same place (which is normal).

Is there a way to move the keyframes automatically with duration change?

Since this is a still image, what you can do is use the "Rate Stretch" tool (keyboard shortcut: R) and stretch the image shorter. If the keyframes don't move with the Rate Stretch tool, you can always create a "Nested Sequence" of just the image (Premiere Pro's rough equivalent to an After Effects precomp) and then rate stretch your nested sequence. This will stretch both the image and the keyframes together.

Thank you for the answer! The rate stretch tool works perfectly.

Another trick is:

copy the clip with the keyframes (Ctrl/Cmdc),
delete the keyframes,
make your adjustments to the timing of the clip,
and then paste the attributes back on to the re-timed clip (right-click the clip and from the context menu choose Paste Attributes…, or go to the menu Edit > Paste Attributes… or hit Ctrl/CmdAltv).

Make sure that Scale Attribute Times is checked, and select the attributes you want to paste, and it will stretch or squash them to fit the new length.

This works for video clips as well as still images, and you can use any trimming tools to change the length of the clip. Deleting any existing key frames before pasting the new ones is necessary if you're pasting back on to the original clip.

Pro Tip This trick works in After Effects and Final Cut Pro too.


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Split video screen into 3 equal parts
I'm working on a project that will be presented on 3 screens. The idea is that each screen in showing a part of the screening video, which means the upper display shows the upper 1/3 of the video screen, the middle display shows the middle part of the video, and the lower display the lower part of the video.
So my question is how can I cut the video screen in 3 equal parts, and with which program?
Thanks for each reply!

This question might get better answers if you supply a little more information. There is a lot of software that can do it, ranging from free command-line tools to very expensive NLEs. What software do you have, how is the video going to be delivered, is it being saved to a file or are you wanting this to happen to a live stream?

@stib I'm using After Effects CS6 and Premier Pro CS6. The video is going to be saved as a file.

Are the screens driven by one device or three devices?

yes, they are driven by 3 devices.

Edit your footage in one timeline, with the sequence setting set to the combined dimensions of all the screens (so the width of one screen across × three times the height). So if they're 1080p screens you'll be looking at 1920 × 3240.
Now make three sequences, each with the resolution of one playback screen, e.g 1920 × 1080. Take your original sequence and lay it into these timelines (as a nested sequence).
Adjust the motion properties of the clip in the first sequence so that the top of the clip lines up with the top of the frame, then in the next sequence align the middle of the clip with the middle of the frame and in the last sequence align the bottom of the clip with the bottom of the frame.
Now you have three sequences that align as you wish. The beauty of nesting the combined sequence is that you can make changes without having to synchronise three separate sequences.


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Auto generate video clips using a CSV of times as markers from a single MPG video
I have an MPG video and a CSV of times. I am searching for a way to automatically generate clips from the video using those times.
So at each time position a clip is generated with 10 seconds either side of the time resulting in a 20 second clip.
I have investigated scene detectors and trying to import markers into Adobe Premier etc, but with no luck.
Any ideas?
Thanks.

You can use an EDL (Edit Decision List) in the CMX3600 format. An EDL is a very simple import/export format from the 1970s, when data was exchanged using floppy disks and videos were stored on tape. It's just a text file and most modern NLEs (including Premiere Pro) can import/export it. (Today there are some variations between NLEs, but that doesn't have to bother you.)
To understand EDLs, it's probably best that you create a new timeline and put your MPG video in it. Then export the timeline into an EDL (File > Export > EDL) and open the exported file with a simple text editor. Analyse the content. Then do some cut in your timeline and export it again.
Basically, an EDL consists of several text lines like this:
VJ0K006W V    C         00:00:00:00 00:00:18:19 00:00:22:02 00:00:40:21

The first column is an ID of your video clip, followed by V for a video track and C for a cut. An A instead of V indicates an audio track. The last 4 columns are timecodes which define the in and out point of the source and the in and out point in the timeline. You see that this clip is the first 18 seconds and 19 frames of the input video starting in the timeline at 22 seconds and 2 frames. It's only logical that the clip must end 18 seconds and 19 frames later, at the timeline position 40 seconds and 21 frames.
Now, to answer your question: You have to write a small program (or ask a friend to write) which takes your CSV file as input, extracts the time position, calculates the +/- 10 seconds, and writes an EDL file in the way that Premiere Pro exported. Premiere Pro should import it without problems and assemble the timeline.
Here are some footnotes:

Wikipedia explains how timecodes are constructed. If you have simple frame rates like 24, 25, or 30 fps, calculating your +/- 10 seconds is not so difficult. But if your clip has 29.97 fps, then you have to consider drop frames. (You know that leap years have an additional day - February 29, but only occur in distinct years. Clips with 29.97 fps have normally 30 frames per second, but at distinct times have 2 frames less.)
I didn't cover the problem of media file names here. When the EDL/CMX3600 format was defined, media only had tape numbers, which were written in the first column of the EDL. When file-based media came into existence, NLEs had to add the file names somehow to the EDL. They did it, but not in a consistent way. But since you only work with Premiere Pro, just see how your video file name appears in the EDL file and mimic the same when writing your file.


text:
Rendered two videos from Adobe Premiere with the same settings but different resolution and they're the same file size
I exported two videos from Adobe Premiere. Same length, same quality settings, but one was 4K (the original footage was 4k) and one was 1080p. I was trying to put these on Facebook so I was trying to crunch file size.
But with the exact same settings they were both 24.4MB. How can this be? The 4K one should be much much larger. Quality stayed the same so when the resolution changed file size should have changed, but it didn't.
Why?
Side note: This was done with variable bitrate, might that have been the reason?

If you say you used the same settings, does that include the average and maximum bitrate settings?

Yes it does. Which is why this is so confusing for me.

Well you've kinda answered your own question: Both videos have the same size because you used the same settings, specifically the settings for target bitrate and maximum bitrate (assuming you're using the H264 codec, other codecs might only have an average bitrate setting available). If you use identical bitrate settings, videos of the same length will always have the same size, regardless of it's resolution and framerate. This is because the bitrate is exactly that: The (average) amount of bits per second. If you have a 10 second video with a bitrate of 10 Mbit/s, it's size will be about 100 Mbit, simple math.
To elaborate on how this is possible with videos with different resolutions: Most commonly used video codecs (as well as image formats) use highly efficient compressing algorithms that can use different levels of compression, where a higher compression level yields smaller video files at the cost of some video quality loss. For example, a JPG image will combine nearly monochrome chunks of the image to one block of information. The higher the compression, the higher the tolerance for similar pixels, resulting in compression artifacts:

(Source)
So what does that mean for your video? To accommodate for the higher resolution of your 4k video, you will need to use a higher bitrate in order to yield better quality, as there is much more information in a 4k video. If you use the same bitrate, the 4k video might actually look worse because there are more compression artifacts.

For some reason I thought that bitrate was linked to number of pixels, not overall data flow. It seems so obvious now. Thanks a ton for explaining that, I finally understand! And I was using H264, yes.

Yeah it took me some time to figure that out as well ... a while ago, I actually asked a quite similar question regarding the relation between bitrate and framerate. In case you're interested, the answer of AJ Henderson is a good read as well: http://video.stackexchange.com/questions/12459/does-raising-the-framerate-while-not-changing-the-bitrate-result-in-quality-loss

So Bitrate is attached to the framerate/per second? So a 1fps video that has a Bitrate of 5mbps would mean each frame is 5MB? 2fps would be 2.5MB/frame, and ect?

Well, basically yes. You can consider the bitrate as the average amount of information available per second. A higher framerate means there is more information per second (more frames → more pixel to describe → more information in bits), so the level of compression gets higher. If you're using a constant bitrate (CPR), there is the same amount of bits available for each and every second of your video. To maximize efficiency, there is the variable bitrate (VBR), which will distribute the overall file size unevenly among the individual seconds. to be continued ...

For example, if there are five seconds in your video where you only see a black screen, the bitrate can be significantly lowered for these five seconds, as the black screen contains very little information. That way, more bits can be used in scenes with much motion (→ much information). So using a variable bitrate, you achieve a better quality compared to a video of the same size that uses a constant bitrate.


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If I shoot in H.264 is it worth it to export the product in ProRes?
I shoot video in H.264. I assume that my footage is forever compressed really small and that exporting to ProRes in FCPX would do nothing but make my file bigger. Is this true? Or am I missing something? Would exporting in ProRes give me better quality than I started with?

Your source sets the quality ceiling, so transcoding to ProRes won't improve the video quality.
Most likely, the H264 files generated by your camera will be constrained baseline profile i.e. I- and P-frames only, and on a modern machine, decoding shouldn't be an issue. I edit H264 (baseline or main profile) all the time on my i7 and occasionally i5 with nVidia CUDA-enabled GPUs.
ProRes is useful when your shoot is in some exotic or heavier-duty codec because of bitrate or compression complexity. Or you need to collaborate with someone using FCP and they prefer to receive ProRes.

The 2 formats have different uses. H.264 is mainly good as a playback format. It's supported widely, compresses very well, and can be decompressed by relatively low-powered devices easily. It's also supported in some video cards making it hardware accelerated on those devices. While it is possible to edit with H.264, it's not ideal as it's a Long-GOP format. GOP here is an acronym for "Group of Pictures". Typically, Long-GOP formats contain 1 keyframe followed by several frames that are differences from the keyframes every so many seconds. So if you want to cut on a frame other than a keyframe, you need to decode the keyframe and all frames from the keyframe up to the frame you want to cut on, making it slower to edit.
ProRes, on the other hand, is intended to ensure the fidelity of the frame through numerous edits. While its compression is good, it focuses more on quality so the amount of compression is less than that of H.264. (In fact, in ProRes 4:4:4(:4) you can have lossless compression with ProRes.) Many devices will not playback ProRes because there's no codec written for them. I think that it's also a higher bit-depth than H.264. (There are higher bit-depth versions of H.264, but I don't know how widely supported they are.) It's also an intra-frame compression scheme, meaning that you don't need any previous frames to decode a given frame. That makes the compression less, but makes it easier to decode any given frame.
So ProRes is better for editing because it preserves fidelity, is faster to decode frames, and offers higher bit depths (or at least offers them more consistently). H.264 is better for playback because it's supported on more devices, and the compression ratio is higher.
You can think of it similarly to audio sample rates. For playback, nothing over 44.1 kHz can make any audible difference to humans (despite what marketing may tell you). But for the purposes of editing, working at 96 kHz can be useful for preserving fidelity through the addition of effects, various mix downs, and mastering.

You're correct. ProRes 422 HQ is 10-bit.


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Capturing room audio (audience questions/comments)
I currently use a video camera and a Sennheiser G3 system for recording conference-type events. The G3 is attached to the speaker, and it works great.
However, there are two situations where it doesn't work so well, namely:

When someone in the audience asks a question (rooms aren't big, so they have no mic), the camera doesn't pick it up.
When we do 'round table' style discussions, there's obviously not enough G3s to go round (or record). Right now I place a lavalier mic on the table and hope for the best.

So I'm looking for advice on what is the best type of mic that would pick up sound in the room. I'm looking for a 360-degree type solution. The camera I use right now is Canon XA20 (with the handle).

Audience questions : there's not much alternative than to have another mic (probably a hand-held one) ready to be used by the audience. If the room is really small, possibly a cardioid microphone on a stand pointed toward the audience could do the job.
Round table : have one or two hand-held mics that the speakers take when they want to speak. That's a constraint on them obviously. You can also try a boundary microphone on the table.
Notice also @stib good suggestion below to have a boom operator for audience questions.

or if you have someone to do it, a boom mic for the audience, so you can get the mic close without climbing over people.


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Create a random number each second
In After Effects I am trying my hands at this

 and would like to add a random number between 45 and 55 in the upper right corner, which should change each second.
If I use Math.round(random(45,55)) I am getting pretty close, but the number updates maybe 20 times a second making it unusable. Is there a way to control how often a new number is generated? Is there another way to do this?
Just to clarify, I want sort of what is already in wiggle, where wiggle(1,30) wiggles once a second.

random updates at the sub-frame level (so its value actually changes even during a frame, for example when motion blur is on. You can see this as you zoom in on the graph editor of a property with a random value, it keeps changing as it zooms and the time is sub-sampled more).
To force it to update only once a second you need to use the seedRandom function, with the timeless attribute set to true, and a seed that changes every second. Using Math.floor(time) will return a value that increases once every second, on the second.
So something like:
seedRandom(Math.floor(time), timeless = true);
random(45,55);

will create a random value that stays constant for 1 second, and
var holdTime = 5;
seedRandom(Math.floor(time/holdTime), timeless = true);
random(45,55);

will stay constant for 5 seconds - you can change the value of the variable holdTime to control how long the value holds for. For example to change once every frame, but not during sub-frame intervals set it to holdTime = thisComp.frameDuration;

If you want eg. 5 seconds, it's time/5


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What is the relationship between hardware acceleration and DXVA/QuickSync/Cuda?
Many video playback applications (e.g. VLC Player, MPC-HC, etc.) are highly configurable. For example:

VLC Player allows you to enable: QuickSync and/or DXVA
Freemake allows you to enable: CUDA and/or DXVA

What I am trying to understand is... what is the relationship between hardware acceleration and these technologies?
For example, can you enable DXVA to leverage GPU based hardware performance AND enable QuickSync to leverage CPU based hardware acceleration?

It is my understanding that...

DirectX Video Accelerator (DXVA)

This type of hardware acceleration improves video encoding/decoding performance by routing 'work' to the GPU (integrated or discrete).

Intel QuickSync

This type of hardware acceleration improves video encoding/decoding performance by routing 'work' to the CPU - specifically a dedicated processor die that is responsible for performing video encoding/decoding operations.

Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA)

Is a closed API developed by NVIDIA that not only gives direct access to the the GPU's virtual instruction set, but also allows for data to be retrieved from the video card so that additional processing can be performed.

You are basically correct.  What exactly is the question?  i took a guess at it, but if that isn't what you are looking for, please clarify what you are looking for.

I don't feel like my original post outlines the complete picture.  For example: this article suggests that DXVA is an API that facilitates GPU & CPU based hardware acceleration. Other articles have mentioned that CUDA supports video decoding.

good point about DirectX.  I updated my answer below to include a section on APIs as well.

They are all forms of hardware acceleration, which broadly, just means that specialized hardware is doing things faster than the basic CPU normally could.  The exact nature of what each type of acceleration does depends entirely on the software you are using and the hardware you are using.
Some hardware is very purpose specific.  Something like Intel QuickSync is a specific hardware encoder and has limited functionality because it can only serve it's purpose driven role.  This is similar to any other dedicated encoder, such as the integrated encoder used for NVidia Shadowplay or the dedicated encoders on devices like the Matrox MXO2 or BlackMagic Intensity.  There are other rolls other than encoding that could be filled by a purpose driven card, but encoding is certainly one of the most common.
Other hardware, such as modern GPUs (CUDA or OpenCL based, I think ATI has a term too, but can't remember it) and video editing or mixing acceleration cards, such as Black Magic's ATEMs or Matrox's older RT line of real time editing cards, are designed to provide more general purpose functionality.  Depending on the hardware they may either offer a wider array of specialized functionality or simply a general purpose parallel processor that works better for video purposes.  In these cases, the functionality is made available to software, but it is up to software to utilize the processing capabilities of the hardware and the exact nature of the acceleration will depend on which algorithms and processing they choose to offload to the hardware.
Another option, as far as APIs are concerned, is something like DXVA, which strives to unify multiple technologies.  DirectX in general is a system for interfacing software and diverse graphics hardware.  It looks for any hardware that tells it that it can fill a role and then will utilize that hardware to do a job when software asks for the job to be done.  I'm not super familiar with DXVA, so I don't know if it puts any specific requirements on hardware (some directX stuff does), but on the hardware end, the implementation could potentially differ greatly and could use either CPU features or GPU features, depending on what's available to it.  It may or may not be directly implemented in terms of the more hardware specific feature sets (CUDA, QuickSync, etc), but it is designed to work across diverse hardware, so you know less about what is going on under the hood.
All of the technologies can be used to speed encoding, but the general purpose technology can also be applied to just about anything that you can process in parallel, so they can (potentially) impact render times as well (the time it takes to make the images that are going to be encoded).

So is it correct to say that: DXVA is simply a software interface that can enable applications to take advantage of CPU (e.g. Intel's QuickSync technology) and/or GPU (e.g. a NVidia's video card via the CUDA API) based hardware acceleration?  If such is the case, then I am assuming that video processing applications could skip DXVA and communicate more directly with the hardware (e.g. use the QuickSync SDK to interface with an Intel processor.

@Pressacco not exactly, it isn't just making CUDA or QuickSync calls necessarily.  It may be integrated in the driver and may make lower use of the hardware as well.  A lot depends on driver support.  It's also possible a vendor may put functionality specifically for DXVA calls.  I'm not certain as I don't know if DXVA puts any specific requirements that can't be implemented directly in terms of any particular existing hardware API.  DirectX in general (and OpenCL like it) are at a more general level designed to be implemented once and work on diverse hardware.  CUDA and QuickSync aren't.

Yes, the software likely could use the direct technologies and be slightly more efficient if it was to make ideal use of all possible hardware for it's exact purpose, but that's also a lot more labor intensive to maintain and handle different possible roles that can be filled by different hardware.  Implementing once with something like DXVA and letting it handle the wireup to hardware makes things much easier for the developer and could potentially result in better overall utilization if the connections to the various other technologies are out of date or less flushed out than DXVA is.

I have been trying to picture in my mind how the different layers fit together... thank you for the clarification!


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Green screen without green screen
Is it possible to, rather than a green screen, take a static shot of a background image (e.g. for a Skype call with a fixed-position webcam), and use this static image as the green screen?
So, I would take a photo of my sitting room through the cam, and then be able to use that image as my "green screen".

It's not clear (to me) what you're after. Could you elaborate? What is the expected result, using what as inputs?

Basically to swap the background of a room out during a Skype conversation. So instead of it looking like we're sitting in the boardroom, you see a static PNG image behind everyone (or maybe even a video feed)

I'm sure Difference Matte technique should be possible in real time nowadays. In order to create a matte afterwards, see this answers: http://video.stackexchange.com/questions/4306/difference-matte-keying-software. Also sometimes it's called: Imaged based keying, because it's based on Image differencing algorithms, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_differencing.

Photo Booth (comes with some Mac products) has something just like this, I have used it before.  It works... okay, although it can get confused depending on your background I guess.

Yes, that is possible. What you're searching for is a difference matte / difference key. For that technique, you supply a base image and the program keys everything out that equals that image. So you could key out your static background so that only you remain in the picture.
However, there are a few downsides:

This technique doesn't work nearly as good as a greenscreen. It will probably require a lot of work and there will still be some artifacts left in the video.
If you're using a bad camera (such as a laptop webcam), the result will be even worse.
If you move your camera even slightly, you'll have a problem. So if you do that with a webcam, don't touch it at all, if possible.
There probably aren't many applications that can do this effect live (as opposed to post-production). IIRC, there is some video chat app for Mac-Computers that can do this. I'm not sure if it is possible with Skype, you'll have to research that. However, keep in mind that it probably won't look as good as you imagine it.

I have used this effect in Photo Booth on a Mac before.  It worked okay, but for my background there were some weird spots where it didn't properly remove the background and some of it would "bleed" through.

That's an interesting idea, but I expect the result to be of low quality.
I suppose you are thinking about a computer program that compares one static frame of the background with other frames where somebody moves in the foreground. All pixels that are the same in both frames (within some narrow tolerance) will be made transparent for a new background. The static background frame has to be taken from the same video and the camera be fixed to avoid differences due to changes of perspective.
But the problem can best be seen with a difficult scene: Let's take a person with blonde hair in front of a pine wood book shelf. There will certainly be parts of the hair detected as background and vice versa. With a still photo this misdetection may be acceptable, but in a video with moving head and hair the separation between fore- and background will appear as a dancing artifact.
Other scenes may be easier. You just have to increase the contrast between fore- and background for example by using hair lights and exchange a dark original background with a dark new background. And of course film in the highest resolution and quality possible.

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


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Using a static Boom Pole
I have a Manfrotto tripod, Canon T3i and Rode videomic pro. I also have the Rode boom pole, but I was wondering which the best way to use it in an interview situation.
For an interview indoors where the talent is sat down, it would be ideal to have the boom pole fixed (i.e. not being held by an operator), since we have minimal crew (2-3 people depending). That being said, we also want to minimise the amount of gear we carry so my question is this:

Is it possible/recommended to somehow mount my boom to the tripod (which will also have the camera attached too) AND keep it out of shot?
Should I buy a separate stand for the boom and if so what kind?

Thanks

For seated interview subjects I usually put the mic on a standard mic stand, the kind that has a horizontal arm, like this:

usually I have to extend the main pole as far as it will go to get the top pole horizontal so it doesn't cut the corner of the frame.
Having the mic in front of and above the speakers mouth means that you don't get pops and sybilance from them breathing into it, and also lets you get the mic closer—the top of the frame is usually closer to the subject's head than the bottom of frame.
Another option is to get a boom pole holder - like this one:

That will be a more pricey option as you'll need to buy a C-stand to put it on

I would not attach the boom pole to the camera tripod, because even light forces to the pole may irritate the camera.
I suppose you know that shot gun mics pick up the sound in front, but also from the back. That's why mounting a mic on top of the camera may easily pick up an echo from behind in smaller rooms.
My suggestion would be to buy a small table tripod for the mic and put it right in front of the interviewee, just out of the frame.

An even easier solution is to use a lavalier microphone on the person.
No need to hold anything. The sound quality would probably be better.

Actually I will be using a lav mic as well, but I like to use two sources of audio whenever possible

I recommend that approach. Lav mics can get good sound without too much fuss, but I often find that a boom mic gets better sound quality, and you don't have the problem of clothing noise and accidental bumps from the talent. Where a lav mic really is useful is for an interview where the subject isn't static.


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How to fit 720p video on a 1080p container?
I am using Adobe Premier Pro to edit our short film and give some generic editing to it.
At the time of shoot we wanted a slow motion effect in a shot, so we shot at 720p at 60fps (We had limitations, our camera doesn't supported 60fps at 1080p).
Now when post processing all the videos fit in the 1080 container but our slow motion video shows black blank space around them. How to overcome this?

You can make a clip scale to the resolution of the sequence by right-clicking on it and pressing Set to frame size (For older versions of Premiere, use Scale to frame size). To set this at the standard behaviour for new clips that aren't the same resolution as the sequence, go to Preferences → General and check Default scale to frame size.
However, keep in mind that upscaling a 720p video to 1080p won't yield you any more quality, worse case, it will look worse. Also, exporting to 1080p when your video is actually only 720p is kind of tricking the viewer. If you upload an upscaled video to Youtube and flag it as 'Full HD', I will so downvote your video ... So if your source material is shot in 720p, I would highly recommend you export to 720p.

:( Then I will have to downscale all the remaining clips to 720p.

Well it depends on how much of your project is shot in 1080p. If most of it is 1080p and you have like one scene that's in 720p, it's maybe better to export to 1080p ... generally, I would recommend shooting everything with the same settings, because whenever you're don't you're gonna face exactly that problem. If the camera doesn't support 1080p@60fps, a case could be made to shoot the entire project in 720p@60fps as opposed to 1080p@30fps (or whatever). Though I guess that's a matter of personal preference.

Upscaling would be preferred in most cases if its just one shot.
Quite a few productions do ultra slow-mo scenes with a GoPro and adjust the GoPro footage to the rest.


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Video with inconsistent exposed / rendered image sizes
I have an interlaced video with MTS file format, which was captured using a HD camera.
When I play it using VLC, it is displayed at resolution 1920x1080 and if I take a snapshot with VLC, the saved image also has a resolution of 1920x1080. I tried playing the video with the Windows Media Player, and the video is also rendered at a resolution of 1920x1080.
However, in VLC, when I select Tools > Codecs information I get the following :
Type: Video
Id original: 4113
Codec: H264 - MPEG-4 AVC (part10) (h264)
Resolution: 1440x1080
Framerate: 25
Decoded format: Planar 4:2:0 YUV

(there also are an audio stream and a subtitle stream, which I am not interested in).
So the exposed resolution seems to be 1440x1080 but when rendered the video is 1920x1080.
Anyway, my true problem comes from the fact that I need to extract the frames from the video to perform some Image Processing. I do that using ffmpeg, which extracts frames at the resolution of 1440x1080, but then the extracted images seem distorted (i.e. compressed horizontally), which causes errors for the Image Processing I am doing.
Any idea why VLC, Windows Media Player, Power DVD manages to render the video correctly, whereas ffmpeg fails to extract the frames at the correct resolution ? And why is the video rendered at 1920x1080 if the exposed codec resolution is 1440x1080 ?

HDV camera, right? It's not untypical for cameras to claim higher resolution than they actually scan. In such cases you have to look at the different aspect ratios involved: pixel, frame, display, sample. Here's a post that discusses this, or google "HDV aspect ratio". And here's a link to the spec from the HDV consortium.
It's essentially anamorphic. The ffmpeg or avconv docs should show how to extract and expand to 1920 in one step.

The specs for HDV are listed here. You'll see that the frame is indeed anamorphic. You could use vf scale=1920:1080,setsar=1:1 to ensure the output is full raster (though it will be interpolated).

Thanks for both your explanations. I checked in ffmpeg and it is indeed saying the following about the input video stream: Video: h264 (High) (HDMV / 0x564D4448), yuv420p, 1440x1080 [SAR 4:3 DAR 16:9], 25 fps, 25 tbr, 90k tbn, 50 tbc. @stib I am not familiar with the anamorphic term, but ultimately, I would like to recover the image as captured by a pinhole camera model. Do you know if the ffmpeg video filter vf scale=1920:1080,setsar=1:1 is enough for that ?

Yes, that filter chain should suffice.


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Adding video into the picture with ffmpeg?
How to Adding video into the picture with ffmpeg?
example:

Use the overlay filter:

ffmpeg -loop 1 -i image.jpg -i overlay.mp4 -filter_complex \
"overlay=main_w-overlay_w:main_h-overlay_h:shortest=1" output.mp4

@RannielBirao You can accept the answer if it works for you.


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How do I add text like this (picture) to a video? Can it be added post or is it an old camera function?

I've read around and a lot has been said about transferring video through VHS and back again but I was wondering about adding this specific kind of text?
Is it a function that exists on old cameras or can the same be achieved with editing software?
Many thanks!!

It was in camera function. But there is no such thing in video editing, which can not be accomplished with correct software.
You can add this text in Adobe Premiere, or Adobe After Effects with some noise etc... You can add it in almost any video editing software. Main thing you need — correct font. It is pixeelated all caps text. You can find one here: http://www.fontspace.com/category/pixelated
Next: Install that font in your system and add text. Make it all caps and with chosen font. Select color and for the second example you also will need black stroke.
Good luck!

You could also add some smearing to replicate the analogue "dot-crawl" artefacts you see in the original - you could fake it with a coloured drop shadow effect


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GoPro why high frame rate does not reduce time
On latest GoPro 4 Silver with 64 GB
when i set 1080p 30fps i get estimated 4 hour recording time but when i double the framerate it not only does not shoren it actually increases so with 1080p 60fps it shows ~4.5 hour.
How is that?

I'm not sure why you would expect an increase in frame rate to result in a decrease in time. How would that work? The frame rate should have no effect on the duration -- recording an hour of video results in... an hour of video.

He's assuming (not unreasonably) that more frames will occupy more disk space and hence result in a lower capacity.

@Mulvya  Ah, so "recording time" means "available capacity". Got it.

The GoPro4 Silver model uses the same bitrate for 1080p-30 as 1080p-60 and hence the recording times are similar. This does mean that fewer bits are allocated per frame in the 60fps mode, although since the codec H264 uses inter-frame compression, the difference won't be as stark.

Thanks that explains it, i assumed that it uses that even if i put on 30 frames, but i could not understand how could 30fps version have less capacity than 60fps, it actually got lower it didnt remain on the same number, i'd just see that on 30fps i can take like 30minutes less video, which is naturally strange :)


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Strike through text After Effects CS6
In most Adobe CS6 apps, the character palette has a strikethrough button. In After Effects CS6, this seems to be  missing.
Is there a way to do strikethrough in After Effects CS6. Most the tutorials I have searched for show how to do animated strikethroughs. I just want a simple text strikethrough (without animation) like this.

You are right, there is no functionality in the Character Panel to achieve a strikethrough. For better control I'd suggest create your text in illustrator and import it into after effects.

@poor, please post as answer so I can mark as correct.

@poor: I didn't un-accept it: It still shows ticked on my screen. The answers was perfect, I was just expecting the one line comment above, but you went above and beyond. If it is still showing unaccepted for you, please let me know and I will flag the post for a mod to investigate it.

Ok, great! A bug or something :) Glad I could help!

Text control is very limited in after effects. There is no functionality in the Character Panel to achieve a strikethrough at the moment.

Using Illustrator
For better text control I'd suggest create your text in illustrator instead:

and import the illustrator file into after effects afterwards:

Note: Editing the text in illustrator is still possible.

Using a shape layer
In order to create a simple stroke above your Text Layer:

Enable the Pen Tool (G)
With no layer selected, click into the Viewer (this will create the 'first point' of the stroke)
Hold down Shift to make sure that the line, which you are going to create is 'straight'
Click into the viewer again to set the 'end point'

This will create a new Shape Layer. If the layer is selected you can adjust the 'stoke color' and the 'thickness' in the Tool Bar:

Another way is to roll out the Properties of the layer by clicking on the tiny triangle > left beside the layers name, go to Contents > Shape(Number) > Stroke(Number) to adjust the 'color' and the 'width'.

However a shape layer provides much more control in terms of animation:

Add a Trim Paths property
Create a first keyframe by clicking on the stopwatch of the End value and set it to 0
Move a few frames forward
Create a second keyframe and set End value to 100

Related: https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/49643/how-to-use-after-effects-trim-path-with-an-illustrator-path/49975#49975
Result


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H.264 or VP9 for encoding for YouTube?
I make short films which I distribute through YouTube. I know YouTube uses VP9 for streaming, but YouTube still recommends uploading with h.264. It makes more sense to me to upload in as similar a format as will be streamed by YouTube, but I might be missing something.
Also, would uploading in a higher quality codec like DNxHR or Prores (I'm not concerned about bandwidth or processing time) better preserve video quality after YouTube's encoding?

It seems YouTube encodes videos also to H.264. You could stream those videos in Google Chrome, if you use h264ify extension.

tl;dr: Since Youtube reencodes all videos regardless of the upload format, it really isn't that important. Just export your video with a high bitrate to preserve quality. Also see my answer here regarding quality loss caused by Youtube.
Long answer: Each reencoding of a video to a compressed format lowers the quality. Usually, that means you'll lose quality at two points: When you export the edited video from your editing software and when you upload the exported video to Youtube, at which point it is reencoded to a highly compressed, streaming-compatible format. You have no control over that second step, so what you can do to achieve the maximum quality possible is make sure you lose as little quality as possible during the first encoding.
In theory, that would mean export to a perceptually (even though technically not) uncompressed format like Apple ProRes or DNxHD as you suggested. However, unfortunately, Youtube doesn't support those formats, so you'll have to use a compressed format. To minimize quality loss, set a high bitrate in your export settings (assuming rendering and upload time aren't an issue. If they are, you'll have to find some middle ground; exporting with a bitrate that is higher than the bitrate of the source material won't yield any more quality, so that is as high as I would go). If you do that, it doesn't really matter which codec you use, both are highly efficient regarding file-size/quality ratio (VP9 probably a bit more so, but that's more important when you're dealing with low bitrates). Youtube recommends H264, so that's what I would use. However, the best advice I can give you is to try out both, i.e. export the same video as both H264 and VP9 with identical bitrates/other settings, upload both to youtube and check which one looks better to you.

ProRes and DNxHD are not uncompressed, but are both lossy, compressed formats. However, they are both generally considered to be perceptually lossless.

Oops, you're right, thanks! I'll correct that right away.

YouTube will re-encode whatever you give it. VP9 is currently too slow to encode. So the best choice is to either:

Give it the original footage, or if it is not accepted by YouTube or is too big to upload, then...
Re-encode to H.264

ffmpeg
ffmpeg will accept just about any input and will provide a great quality output. Development is very active, so it is best to use a recent build which you can download for Windows, OS X, or Linux.
Example commands
Encode H.264 video, stream copy audio, in Matroska container:
ffmpeg -i input.avi -c:v libx264 -preset medium -crf 18 -c:a copy output.mkv

Encode H.264 video, Vorbis audio, in Matroska container:
ffmpeg -i input.avi -c:v libx264 -preset medium -crf 18 -c:a libvorbis -q:a 5 output.mkv

-crf 18 is considered to be roughly visually lossless. The range is a log scale from 0-51. 0 is lossless (huge files), 23 is default.
-preset controls the encoding efficiency, and therefore affects the encoding speed. Generally it is recommended to use the slowest preset you have patience for, or if in doubt just use medium (the default). Choices are: ultrafast, superfast, veryfast, faster, fast, medium, slow, slower, veryslow.
Your player may not like the output, but YouTube will. If that is the case then just use a sane player such as VLC.

Also see

FFmpeg Wiki: H.264 Video Encoding Guide
FFmpeg Wiki: How to Encode Videos for YouTube and other Video Sharing Sites

Most of these answers are outdated. Youtube actually re-encodes our videos into VP9 making HD videos look rather better in terms of quality. Its only when you upload the video in its original encoding that looks degraded based on compression. It can take a day or a week for youtube to re-encode our HD videos to Vp9. I'm a youtuber myself and can really see the difference

"Its only when you upload the video in its original encoding that looks degraded based on compression. It can take a day or a week for youtube to re-encode our HD videos to Vp9." I suspect this is something YouTube would publish. Can you provide a source?

Not as outdated as you'd think. For reasons that boggle the mind, YouTube still recommends uploading in h264.


text:
How to convert LibreOffice Impress to video with custom animations?
I am wondering whether it is possible to convert a LibreOffice Impress presentation into a video (to upload on YouTube), while preserving custom animations on slides.
There is a possibility to export the presentation to a .swf Macromedia Flash file, but the custom animations are not preserved.
Does anyone have a solution?

I would use a screen recording / capture tool. With this solution you can even define your individual timing from slide to slide.
Which software to use? Depending on your operating system there are many free or low cost solutions available. There are even web-based services.
This blog post lists 10 of them. I copied that list here for reference.
Desktop Software:

IceCream (Windows)
ActivePresenter (Windows)
CamStudio (Windows)
Snagit (Windows/Mac)
Jing (Windows/Mac)

Web Services:

Webinaria
Apowersoft
Screenr
ScreenToaster
ScreenCastle

I'm sure next year there will be different options. That's why this list can only be an overview and starting point for your own research.
You might need another tool to finally crop your recorded video to 1280x720 or 1920x1080 pixel, because the screen recorder might have recorded an odd rectangle that you have drawn with the mouse. My favorite is VirtualDub for Windows.

list of GNU-Linux screen recorders, included as a comment because I have not tested all of them but they are in the Debian Bookworm repos, there are some others [not included here] just for command-line recording. : byzanz, deepin-screen-recorder, gnome-shell-extension-easyscreencast, kazam, peek, recordmydesktop, simplescreenrecorder, vimix, vokoscreen, wf-recorder


text:
Y-adapter to record different levels and phantom power
I know that its not uncommon to split an XLR using a Y-adapter when going in to an external audio recorder and setting the levels lower on one input (about -10db lower) so that if the main input peaks you have the lower level to get the audio from. My question is, how is this accomplished with phantom power?
I have a Roland R-26 and it does not have the ability to shut of phantom for one of the analog inputs, and I don't want to 'double up' the phantom on the mic. I suppose since my Rode NTG2 supports battery power that I could just use that and turn off phantom completely, but I was wondering how this is handled in the recorder? Does anyone have experience with this?

As explained on another board (https://www.gearslutz.com/board/10509494-post13.html):
There are two reasons why phantom power mic inputs should never be connected directly together with a "Y" cable or adapter. (Such adapters or "Y" cables are fine for use with unpowered dynamic mic inputs, but not for phantom powered inputs. That includes inputs on the same device like (2) side by side channels on a mixer.)

Potential mic damage:

Modern phantom powered microphones use the phantom power to power the impedance converter and the output line driver stages, and to supply the capsule bias (on non-electret mics). By placing two powered inputs in parallel the source impedance of the phantom power source is halved. On a P-48 circuit, instead of have a single 6810 ohm resistor on each input line feeding the mic you now have an effective power source impedance of 3405 ohms on each line. The P-48 circuit can now supply twice the current. The lowered P-48 resistance changes the operating voltage at the mic. That can change the operating point of the output stage drivers and the intended impedance converter operating point, and possibly the capsule bias.
Some mics (not the majority), use a voltage regulator (usually a single Zener diode) to keep the mic active-electronics operating at a constant voltage. On those mics, using paralleled powered inputs will greatly increase the power dissipation in the Zener regulator. The Zener current can more than double.
A modern phantom powered mic is designed to work with a known source impedance for the phantom power current. Halving that impedance is risky. Additionally paralleling the inputs drops the load impedance the mic "sees" to half of a single input. That's not a mic safety issue like lower the P-48 current source impedance, but may affect the sound of some mics.
Incidentally, cutting the pin-1 return for one of the inputs may not change the current supplied from the input. There will be a good chance that there will be another ground path like a power line common connection or another audio cable between the two pieces of gear which will still provide a return path for the phantom power current.

Input circuit damage (not relevant to your case, but potentially interesting nonetheless):

If phantom powered inputs on different pieces of gear have their inputs paralleled using a simple direct "Y" cable it's possible to damage the mic input stage of one when it's operating power (not phantom Power) is off and the phantom power on the other input is switched on or off. Most modern op amp input can be damaged if either of the differential input terminals is allowed to reach a voltage that exceeds the power supply rail voltage. When one input amp is powered down, it's rails are at or very near "0" voltage. Even the application of a few volts coupled in from an external power source (the PP on the "other" mic input) may produce a input voltage transient that exceeds the (now "0" ) power rail voltage. Some input's have voltage "clamps" to prevent that but many do not. Remember, the designers did not design the inputs to withstand [externally-applied] phantom power when the device was switched "off".
That is not an issue if you are running (2) mixer inputs in parallel (same power supplies), but can be if you are using separately powered devices.
Bottom line: If you care about protecting your powered mics and your mic pre inputs, don't ever use a directly coupled parallel "Y" cable on a phantom powered input no matter what anyone tells you. An isolated transformer splitter, or capacitively-coupled "splitter" is the only wise solution.
Or, in your case, use the internal battery power and split the mic signals as if it were a self-powered dynamic mic.


text:
does h.264 have separate audio and video
We are requesting video producers to send us video and we've worded our request as below. Please tell me if our request makes sense?
"One 720 p editable file in h.264 in an mp4 or AVI container with separate tracks for audio and video."
My question specifically is: does h.264 even have separate tracks for audio and video or am I making a mistake?
P.S.
We know h.264 is really a presentation format, but the small adjustments we make re-render well enough and absolute perfection is not the goal.
Thanks for any insight you can give me.

You don't need to specify "separate tracks", just the audio and video specs you accept. All common containers will handle multiple disparate tracks including video, audio, text (captions etc). h.264 is a video codec; you could choose (or allow) any of several audio codecs.

Thanks @Jim Mack, for your answer.
I just could not nail that little fact down.


text:
Is 360 video editing the same as traditional video editing?
With the rise and price drop in 360 video I'm wondering what the format is. Looking at the CENTR Camera doesn't even mention editing or file format. Ricoh Theta doesn't mention file format or serious editing but does say they offer their own software for some editing.
What file type do 360 degree cameras use? Can it be edited in regular video production suites like SpeedGrade, DaVinci Resolve, Premier, FinalCut, etc.. or do you need some special software?

Theta S records in MP4 (1920x1080, 16x9, 15.9 Mbps, 29.97fps) and the previous one in MOV (7.9Mbps, 14.98fps). Interesting related article about 360 in After Effects: http://rocketstock.com/blog/creating-360-video-effects

Usually 360° videos became 360° only in realtime during playback. You can see it:

Go to to this video (youtube now supports 360° videos)
Now, using Chrome install this extension (it will disable HTML5 player)
Try to see video from the point one again.

You will see something like that:

That happens because Flash player don't know how to interpret 360° video and showing original state of it.
So, during editing your 360° video can be displayed as normal video with huge distortion. If you can handle that, than you can edit it in any program of your chose.
Good luck!

Exactly, the format of the video is just a standard video file, most 360 cameras I've seen seem to export in MP4 or AVI video. It's just a normal video file, with the data distorted based on equirectangular projection, the same projection we use to take the earth and put it on a flat map..

@D3_JMultiply or Shultc - thanks, so trimming and color correction and stuff should be fairly easy. Logo might be doable since its so small and could try distorting it in Photoshop or some tool for photographers (a few exist). But to add say a caption or lower thirds are there any tools that can convert AE to Equirectangular to be overlayed so then it looks correct when uploaded?

yes, just whatever you do do not crop the video in any form, add borders etc.


text:
ffmpeg pixel format definitions
ffmpeg -pix_fmts lists many pixel formats. In my ffmpeg, there are 66 different pixel formats that start with yuv. A few of them are familiar to me (e.g., yuv422p), but most of them are not (e.g., yuva422p16be).
Where are these pixel formats defined?

Most are self describing. yuva422p16be YUV are luma and chroma planes. a is the alpha channel. 422 is the plan size descriptions, p means planer, 16be means 16 bits per pixel big endian format.

Thanks @SlimSCSI. Do you know what the j stands for in yuvj440p?

YUV420P uses the range 16 to 239 to describe luminance and chroma values, so values from 0 to 16 get mapped to the same output level, as do values 239-255. YUVJ420P uses the full range from 0 to 255. Not sure why it's J though.

In libavutil/pixfmt.h: AV_PIX_FMT_YUVJ420P,  ///< planar YUV 4:2:0, 12bpp, full scale (JPEG), deprecated in favor of AV_PIX_FMT_YUV420P and setting color_range.

If your question was

Where are these pixel formats defined?

Go to http://ffmpeg.org/download.html and download the source of ffmpeg. Then unpack it
tar -xavf FILENAME.tar.*

and descend to the folder in the source code that is called libavutil
cd ffmpeg-*/libavutil/

and open the file pixfmt.h where you will find a description of all pixel formats. A few sample lines
AV_PIX_FMT_YUV420P,   ///< planar YUV 4:2:0, 12bpp, (1 Cr & Cb sample per 2x2 Y samples)
AV_PIX_FMT_YUYV422,   ///< packed YUV 4:2:2, 16bpp, Y0 Cb Y1 Cr
AV_PIX_FMT_RGB24,     ///< packed RGB 8:8:8, 24bpp, RGBRGB...
AV_PIX_FMT_BGR24,     ///< packed RGB 8:8:8, 24bpp, BGRBGR...
AV_PIX_FMT_YUV422P,   ///< planar YUV 4:2:2, 16bpp, (1 Cr & Cb sample per 2x1 Y samples)

Additionally you can read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YUV and it’s cited sources and external links.

Or just visit https://ffmpeg.org/doxygen/trunk/pixfmt_8h_source.html

Or http://git.videolan.org/?p=ffmpeg.git;a=blob;f=libavutil/pixfmt.h;hb=HEAD

Or https://github.com/FFmpeg/FFmpeg/blob/master/libavutil/pixfmt.h


text:
SD class 2 and video HD
I hope that I'm writing in a right section. I have a videocamera full HD (low price) and a SD class 2. Can this type of class film HD videos or it will save bad quality videos?
Thanks, Alessandro.

According to the SD association, Class 2 SD cards have a minimum writing speed of 2 MB/S. That is not sufficient for HD recording, let alone Full HD. Even though that is only the minimum speed, I don't think the SD card will be nearly good enough. If you already have the camera and the SD card though, why not try it out for yourself? Worst thing that can happen is the camera won't record anything or stop after a few seconds.
Here's an overview of the different speed classes. Depending on your camera model, I would recommend you get a class 6 or 10 SD card. The manual of your camera should also state which SD writing speed is required to record Full HD video. Most cameras (at least in the medium to high pricing range) will also allow you to change the (average) bitrate video is recorded at, you should also look into that. Use that information to decide on an optimal SD card for your needs.

Thank you for the answer. I haven't got the camera at the moment so  I can't try.


text:
Are the voice and background tracks merged together when filming hollwood movies?
When we watch a movie we can hear background music and voices of actors. We also hear sound effects. When we watch a DVD movie the voice and background music merged inside a language track such as English language audio track. Audacity is program used to mix voice-overs and music. It is hard to create an audio track in another language if there is not a separate sound track. It is easy to dub a movie when there is a sound track.

When creating Hollywood movies, are there separate vocal track and a music track?
Is there a separate track for sound effects?
How do you mix voice and music tracks and convert it into a language track?
What is the software used to mix the tracks in question 3?
What is an original sound track (OST)?
Is the original sound track (OST) used when dubbing a movie?

Thanks in advance.

We encourage one focused question per post. It would be better if you asked three or more separate questions, maybe 1&2, 3&4 and 5&6, which seem to be related topics

To answer only the first part, film sound is often split into three parts: music, effects, and dialog. This allows dialog to be replaced for dubbing. This isn't a hard-and-fast rule but it's the general way it's been done for a long time.
This is not how the sound is released, though. For release these are combined into a theatrical mix of two or more (for surround) channels, so the original three-track mix is no longer in play.


text:
How to fix a 24fps shot that looks jerky when rendered at 30fps frame rate?
I accidentally shot one scene at 24fps instead of the 30fps I intended.  I want to render it at 30fps (to fit the rest of the video), but the render from Premiere looks choppy, regardless of whether I use Frame Blending or not.  I know this is expected, especially since I shot at 1/60 shutter speed, but are there any effects / settings I can apply to smooth things out?  Blur perhaps?
For what it's worth, it's a moving shot of some dancing, so both the subject and the camera are moving throughout.
Thanks!

Have you tried with Blender? Load the video in the video editing and modify the fps in the default page. Render after that and check.

Thanks @YoMismo! It's worth a shot, especially if it interpolates motion better than Premiere's Frame Blending (does it?).  I'm concerned about loss of quality from multiple renders, though, but maybe Blender has good lossless support or its interpolation looks good enough to make losses worthwhile?

If you change the frame rate of everything to 60fps you'll get an even frame blend every 2.5 (60fps) frames.  If you change the frame rate to 120fps you can eliminate the stutter completely, as 30 fps will repeat frames 4x and 24fps will repeat frames 5x.  But few systems can play 120fps, whereas many can play 60fps (including YouTube).

Thanks, Michael!  I would not have thought of your solution.


text:
Final Cut Pro X & Davinci Resolve workflow
I'd like to grade a Final Cut Pro X project with Davinci Resolve. Unfortunately my Final Cut experience is very limited and I don't understand how to get a consolidated project, linked to the original footage files in order to create a clean xml file for Davinci Resolve.
When I try to consolidate a project (File > Consolidate), Final Cut creates additional, encoded and conformed files with a weird naming scheme - unfortunately this is not what I expect.
Is there a way to keep the source footage links and create a 'clean edit' which is assembled from the source material instead?

What I'd do:

Duplicate the project for a backup.
"Collapse" the timeline from the bottom up:  Lasso all of the clips
immediately above the primary storyline (to make a Premiere
analogy, if the primary storyline is V1, then select all of the
clips on V2), right click, and select "overwrite to primary
storyline."
Repeat step 2 until there are no clips above the primary storyline.
File->Export XML
Import this xml file into Resolve
Color clips
Render individual source files
Replace FCPX clips with new ones

I don't have my DaVinci Dongle on me, or I'd elaborate on that side.


text:
Voice over video with current sound
I want to record a video and want to play some recorded voice over the video, but I still want the sounds of the original video to remain. Is this possible, and when the answer is yes, can you recommend the software you are doing this with?

Which platform (OS) do you using?

@Shultc I am using Windows 10

It is possible in almost any video=editing software.
If you are using Windows and you do not have much experience in video editing, than you can make it Windows Movie Maker. It is free and simple for beginners.

Alright I will try it with the Movie Maker :)


text:
Handle 2 sources in a video file
We recorded video from our last event with 2 sources (1 mic by speakers) and we now have to handle MXF files with 2 diferent sources.
I need to upload this video file on Youtube, it work but it only take the first audio source.
Any (Simple) way to merge this two audio sources ?
Regards,

First, get ffmpeg.
Generally, you want to give YouTube the highest quality you can because it will re-encode anything you give it, but the formats used in MXF can be mental for uploading. So re-encoding to modern formats for a more manageable upload often makes sense.
Example
ffmpeg -i input.mxf \
-filter_complex "[0:a:0][0:a:1]amerge" \
-ac 2 -c:v libx264 -crf 18 -c:a libvorbis output.mkv

What these options do

-filter_complex "[0:a:0][0:a:1]amerge[a]" – Take the two audio streams and combine them with amerge filter into one, multichannel stream.

The [0:a:1] refers to [input file index:stream specifier:stream index], so [0:a:1] is the second audio stream from the first input file (input.mxf).

-ac 2 – Downmix audio to stereo.
-c:v libx264 – Encode video to H.264. See more info and examples.

-crf 18 – libx264 option to make output roughly "visually lossless".

-c:a libvorbis – Encode audio to Vorbis.
output.mkv – Output to Matroska container format. It will not be playable in WMP or QuickTime, but who cares. YouTube will, and YouTube is all that matters in this case. VLC, mpv, or MPC-HC will be able to play it.

Keeping it as MXF
If you want MXF for whatever reason:
ffmpeg -i input.mxf \
-filter_complex "[0:a:0][0:a:1]amerge[a]" \
-map 0:v -map "[a]" -ac 2 -c:v copy -c:a pcm_s16le output.mxf

The video will be stream copied (re-muxed). No re-encoding, so it will be fast and preserve quality.
MXF is picky, so the -map option is used to arrange the output streams in a MXF friendly order.


text:
Live streaming an event
I want to live stream an event on YouTube with my DSLR. Will I need a HDMI capture card? If yes can you please list a few inexpensive ones.
Also, please mention if there are any other ways for me to do this.
Thanks.

Yes, you will need an HDMI capture card.  If you have a modern Mac, you can make do with this $145 device that plugs into its Thunderbolt port: https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/ultrastudiothunderbolt/techspecs/W-DLUS-04

Do you work for Blackmagic?

No, I don't work for BlackMagic.  You can read my profile here: http://video.stackexchange.com/users/10931/michael-tiemann?tab=profile


text:
Adobe Premiere saves m4v instead of mp4
I have problems with my Premiere Pro. It is first time this has happened, and I cannot understand why.
I am creating a timelapse from my images. When I want to export media, I choose format H.264 (not H.264 Blu-ray), dimensions 1920x1080. Output name is visible as "Sequence02.mp4".
After export is finished, there is a file "Sequence02.m4v" on disk. Why? What causes Premiere to change file format by itself? I used Premiere before and this never happened. Maybe I'm using some different setting, but what could cause this change?

It's probably worth noting that m4v is just an alternate name for mp4 (it can sometimes indicate the presence of drm, but that shouldn't be a problem here), so you should be able to simply rename the file.

I encountered the same issue when I turned the sound off in the sequence.  When I re-enabled audio export, even though I didn't want to or need to, it saved as an mp4 again.

The most likely cause for this are faulty multiplexer settings. In the export window, make sure both "export video" and "export audio" are checked (see screenshot). Then go to the multiplexer tab. The multiplexer gives you control about how your video and audio stream will be muxed (bundled) in one file. Make sure "mp4" ist selected, and the stream-compatibility (the second option) is set to "standard".


text:
ffmpeg cropped video changes aspect ratio
I have a heterogenous set of videos (codecs, dimensions, size) that I would like to crop off the top using ffmpeg.  I've used this code successfully for year without any trouble (example here crops off 64px):
ffmpeg -i in.avi -y -pix_fmt yuv420p -an -qscale 1 -vcodec libx264 -vf crop=in_w:in_h-64:0:64 out.mp4

However, I've now run into a case that it does not work correctly, and I suspect it has something to do with SAR and DAR.  I have a clip that shows pixel dimensions of 960x720 [SAR 960:720 DAR 16:9], original looks close to this:

When I use the above command, I end up with a video that ffprobe/ffmpeg says is 960x656 [SAR 4:3 DAR 80:41], but when I view it on a web browser or quicktime it is displayed as 1280x656:

How can I modify the command to account for this use case, without breaking the cropping of all other clips?  Here's what I've unsuccessfully tried:
ffmpeg -i in.avi -y -pix_fmt yuv420p -an -qscale 1 -vcodec libx264 -vf scale=960:656,setsar=1 -vf crop=in_w:in_h-64:0:64 out.mp4
ffmpeg -i in.avi -y -pix_fmt yuv420p -an -qscale 1 -vcodec libx264 -vf setsar=sar=0 -vf setdar=dar=0 -vf crop=in_w:in_h-64:0:64 out.mp4

Here's an archive of the input and output files I'm getting. https://www.ultrasoundoftheweek.com/give/uploads/clips.zip

"Keep in mind that the sample aspect ratio set by the setsar filter may be changed by later filters in the filterchain, e.g. if another "setsar" or a "setdar" filter is applied." - so the correct order is needed and as said by @orgoro possibly try to do not separate filters and instead do: -vf "filter1=...,filter2=...,filter3"

This should work universally.
ffmpeg -i in.avi -y -pix_fmt yuv420p -an -qscale 1 -vcodec libx264 -vf setsar=1,crop=in_w:in_h-64:0:64 out.mp4

@user255406 libx264 ignores -qscale. Use -crf instead.

It looks like in some cases you can simply use setsar= or even just setsar

ffmpeg accepts only one video filter (marked as -vf)
you should merge all the video filters you want into one, comma separated string:
ffmpeg ... -vf setsar=1,crop=in_w:in_h-64:0:64 out.mp4


text:
In Premiere, is there an easy to way to extract sequences into new projects?
I started a Premiere project that eventually spawned multiple videos.  Each of those videos is in its own sequence.  I'd like to extract them into their own projects, both to clear out the project manager and leave it more organized, but also so I can "Clean" the Media Cache (I don't expect to re-open these sub-projects anytime soon).
Is there an easy way to move the sequences (and associated assets) into new projects?

There are two ways to do this; since they both have their merits, I'll include both of them.
1. The Project Manager
Open File → Project Manager. It's pretty straightforward, just select the sequences you want to export. If you want to clean up the preview files, uncheck Include Preview Files. Select the target directory and click ok. Repeat this for every sequence you want to export to an individual project. The problem with that approach is that this will also copy your media assets to the new project's directory, which you might not want.
2. Importing sequences
Another option is to import sequences from other Premiere project.

Create a new project in Premiere.
Select File → Import.... In the pop-up window, select your old project file that has all the sequences in it.
Another dialogue window will pop up asking you whether you want to import the entire project or individual sequences. Select Import Selected Sequences.
This will open another window where you can browse your old project and select the sequence(s) you want (to select multiple sequences, hold CTRL / CMD while selecting them).

This will not copy or move your media assets to a new directory. Instead it will just import the selected sequence(s) and all media assets it contains into your new project. This however will not import any assets that aren't used in your imported sequence(s). So if you're still working on one of the imported sequences in the new project and want to add clips you had already imported in the old project but hadn't used yet, you'll have to import those manually. To prevent that, import all media assets that are relevant to the sequence into your new project before importing the sequence and make sure Allow importing duplicate media is unchecked in the import dialogue.

I tried the second one and it worked.  Thanks for explaining the differences between both approaches!


text:
Crossfading audio at beginning and ending of video
The html5 video tag has a loop attribute. When playing a video in a continuous loop, it doesn't do this seamlessly. I hear cracks and pops at the beginning. With ffmpeg I am able to trim .05 seconds from the start and end to make audio and video uniform. That helped a lot but still not fully smooth when played in a loop. Then crossfade came into question. How can I gradually lower the volume at the end of video and gradually raise the volume at the beginning?
ffmpeg .05 seconds from the start and end
for f in *.mp4; do
    duration=$(ffmpeg -i "$f" 2>&1 | grep "Duration"| cut -d ' ' -f 4 | sed s/,//)
    length=$(echo "$duration" | awk '{ split($1, A, ":"); print 3600*A[1] + 60*A[2] + A[3] }' )
    trim_start=.05
    trim_end=$(echo "$length" - .05 - "$trim_start" | bc)
    echo ffmpeg -ss "$trim_start" -i "$f" -c copy -map 0 -t "$trim_end" "${f%.mp4}-trimmed.mp4"
done

Why are you not just using ffprobe to get the duration?

@LordNeckBeard, yes I will change it to ffprobe for duration. However is there a way to decrease audio in the last 30 frames or second?

For purposes of this answer I'll assume the audio is encoded with an aac codec.
For each video:
Use ffmpeg to extract the sound track to its own file.
ffmpeg -i "${f%.mp4}" -vn -acodec copy "${f%-sound.aac}"

If not yet known, determine the duration of the audio file.  In some cases ffmpeg is known to give an incorrect duration (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10437750/how-to-get-the-real-actual-duration-of-an-mp3-file-vbr-or-cbr-server-side), so I'd use sox.
duration=$(sox soundtrack_before_processing.mp3 -n stat 2>&1 | sed -n 's#^Length (seconds):[^0-9]*\([0-9.]*\)$#\1#p')

Use sox to apply fades in and out.
sox "${f%-sound.aac}" "${f%-sound-with-fades.aac}" fade t $fade_in_seconds $duration $fade_out_seconds

Replace the audio track in the original video file with the faded track.
ffmpeg -y -i "${f%.mp4}" -i "${f%-sound-with-fades.aac}" -map 0:v -map 1 -vcodec copy -acodec aac -strict experimental -shortest "${%f-new.mp4}"

I was using sox rather than ffmpeg because of the SO question listed in the answer, which notes an issue with ffmpeg related to getting the actual duration of an audio stream.  Granted, that may be dependent upon which code was used to encode the stream.


text:
Red bars, yellowing, and pixelated output from Premiere
I'm having trouble exporting from Premiere (OS X 10.11, Premiere Pro CC 2015.0.2). While the preview plays flawlessly, when I export I get odd red bars, yellowing, and pixelation in some (or all) of the still images. I've attempted many different settings in the output, and while there is some variation on the severity and frequency of the distortion, it is always present.
Here is a sample of the issue.

Any suggestions?

What are your export parameters? What codec, data rate, etc? Whatever information you can supply will help.

This is extremely well documented in the Adobe Premiere forum.  Premiere Pro is not fully compatible with El Capitan (10.11).  The work-around is to disable the GPU by selecting "Mercury Software Render", which will remind you why so many people hated doing digital video before GPU cards existed.
The situation is a mess.  Adobe has apologized, is working on a fix, and has no idea when Premiere Pro, or an update to 10.11, or both, will result in a working system.
The other work-around is to back-out 10.11 and downgrade to Yosemite.