text:
What is the best format for archiving digital movies?
I work at a movie production company and we have a lot of film post production and release happening. All types of formats are handed to us by filmmakers and other studios. Now we want to archive all the files to a storage device and start moving them to LTO devices. What do you think is the best file format for storing the films? Note that the files are supposed to be ready to be accessed later for the purpose of preparing for screening and subtitling.

Best is subjective as the answers to date show. What is your budget? What is your eventual distribution (theatrical, broadcast, etc.)? What MAM system do you have? AXF might be a viable container for you, especially if you receive IMF packages.

Ah yes, the age-old question without a definitive answer that is straightforward and cost-effective.
In short, you want to store them in the highest-quality you can, in a format that you'll hopefully not have trouble opening in a few years.
Some of this depends on the quality of your source material and your workflow. Archivists will often tell you to use uncompressed 10-bit video streams, or something like TIFF or PNG sequences. This, of course, can send the size of your project north of 1TB/hour, is not terribly practical, and not at all necessary for most projects out there.
I should first provide the disclaimer that the following recommendations are common practice but not technically true archival formats. But it is my opinion that it doesn't really matter.
If you're a Mac-based facility (or can export the masters from a Mac) then ProRes is still probably the best balance. If you're working with very high-quality source material with a lot of VFX/color information, ProRes 4444 is available, but honestly most people would be find with ProRes 422 HQ.
If you're on Windows/Premiere, there are other options. I'm personally a can of CineForm, which began as GoPro's codec but has since been open-sourced. It has 10-bit 4:2:2 and 12-bit 4:4:4 modes with output quality on par with ProRes but, in my experience, is a bit less resource-intensive to decode. It's also not ubiquitous -- not all software can decode CineForm, so beware of that, but as it is open source, it should not be difficult to find a tool that can handle it. (Premiere and FFmpeg both handle it fine.)
As an additional option, and what the movie studios tend to use (out of habit), is Avid's DNxHD/DNxHR codecs. Similar settings and output as the previously-mentioned choices, though it is arguably inferior in a few ways and has some licensing caveats.
One thing that negates the fears about these not-quite-archival-caliber formats is to also just archive the video project itself with all raw footage, project files, assets, etc. self-contained. But this is expensive and down the road someone will need to open up the project and export something, so, not always ideal.
I tend to use CineForm and occasionally ProRes HQ, and hold onto the raw footage and project files when possible. You'll have to play around with options and decide what is best for your use-case.

DNxHD/DNxHR codecs. ... has some licensing caveats -> what are these?

If you're looking for an open source codec that is finding favour in archives and museums as an archival format, you might want to look at FFV1 from the FFMPEG project.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FFV1
It is reasonably fast, reasonably efficient, cross-platform (including linux), free, and supports up to 16-bit per channel colour. Storage size is similar to ProRes.
However the main advantage is that it is 100% open source and non-proprietary, so it's not going to suddenly disappear come the Patent Apocalypse. It comes with ffmpeg, which is hands-down the best tool for doing these kind of conversions anyway.


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Which software was used to produce this demo video?
I'm wondering which software was used to create the demo video you can see in Piktochart's website.
The embedded Youtube video is this:

I know it is an infographics service (nothing related), but I wonder which tool or techniques they used to create the video stated above.
Or any alternative tools to generate such video type/kind
Thanks a lot

Sigh.Impossible to say. It was probably something like After Effects, but could have been any number of things, including Resolve, Nuke, Blender, Natron, Flash, ToonBoom, or even Windows Paint, just to name a few. But knowing what the software was doesn't really help you: none of those packages comes with a "make me an animation" button. It's like knowing that the Mona Lisa was done with oil paints, it's not going to help you paint your own Rennaissance masterpieces is it?
If you want an animation done, just hire an animator for heaven's sake.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Why would you deliver a video in 1920x964?
Quite simply; I've never come across this aspect ratio in video before and I just wanted to know if there is a standard in video (that I'm unaware of) that routinely uses this aspect ratio.
For a little extra background: an outsourced company in the States produced a video for us (we're based in the UK) and they delivered the video in 1920x964 and I really don't want to go back to them and ask 'why?' in case I seem like an idiot, so I'm checking with you gals and guys first :D
I know I've never heard of that ratio but I didn't know if it were more standard either in the US or in a different branch of film-making that I'm not party to.

I cannot think of a good reason why 1920x964.  It is not uncommon to see 2:1 aspect ratios, which would be 1920x960.  The extra 4 pixels are a mystery, especially because 960 divides by 8 and 16, which make it very JPG friendly.  964 does not divide evenly by 8, either.

Just in case anyone else comes up against something similar, I think I've found an answer: websites or, more specifically, web browsers.
I've spoken to our front-end developer and he's informed me that it's incredibly likely that this aspect ratio was chosen so that the film could be displayed at full resolution on a website (taking into account the address-bar at the top of the browser window and any footer (like the Windows taskbar, for example) at the bottom. The ~120 pixel difference means that the video will appear to be 'full-screen' with the header and footer of the browser/OS visible.
I still think it's weird because playing this in actual full-screen on a monitor/TV will result in letterboxing but... whatever.

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


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How do you edit a sliding effects for a behind the scenes reel in the below video

I want to edit in premiere pro cc and maybe after effects, to show vfx and grading.

I'd just like to (humbly) help flesh out Stib's answer a little:
There are a few ways of doing this in Premiere. The easiest way is to use the wipe preset in the effects list (Video Transitions > Wipe > Wipe); pop your footage side-by-side (or one on top of the other) and drag and drop the effect from the list onto the cut in the timeline (or onto the end of the shot if you're stacking them).
Alternatively, you can use the 'Crop' effect on the top shot in a stack (as Stib suggested) and animate it or you can create a mask (within the 'Opacity' section of that shot's effects panel) and animate the mask path.
While you'll get better control and results by doing this in After Effects (and you'll have an easier time of animating a nice bisecting line to show where the wipe happens), it is entirely possible in Premiere.

Not 100% sure, but usually wipe effects come with the ability to add a border. That said I'd personally do it with After Effects too.

That effect is known as a wipe, it's a transition effect in Premiere. Have the graded and ungraded effects above each other in the timeline and apply a wipe to the top one. Adjust the timing as you like.

you can get these effects on both premiere and after effects.

Duplicate the original video/pic
Add color adjustment on the duplicate video/pic
Apply the wipe transition

watch video tutorial here
After effects
1. Duplicate the original video/pic

Apply the transition effect using Linear Wipe on all files
Adjust the linear wipe to the desired time the wipe applies

Another way to apply the transition with color effect is by using mask
the tutorial starts at 3:07 click here to view the video


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How to concatenate 2 MP4 videos to output of certain bitrate?
I've already read the other articles about concatenating but couldn't find any that discuss specifying the output bitrate.
I have 2 MP4 videos.
What I want to do is speed up the first video to 110% speed (without changing audio pitch) and then concatenate it with the second video (which will remain at normal speed), and I want the resulting video to have a bitrate of 2.5 Mbps (since that's what Wistia told me should be the minimum for my upload).
Currently, my first attempt results in a video where the 2nd part is all mangled and shows bright green, etc. My second attempt (of Step 4) results in a video that has a total bitrate of only 1645kbps.
Step 1:
In Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2017, I've exported 2 videos, each using these settings:
Frame Rate: 30
Field Order: Progressive
Aspect: Square Pixels (1.0)
Profile: Main
Bitrate Encoding: CBR
Target Bitrate [Mbps]: 2.5
Audio Format: AAC
Audio Codec: AAC
Sample Rate: 48000 Hz
Bitrate [kbps]: 320

Step 2.
ffmpeg -i video1.mp4 -filter_complex "setpts=PTS/1.1;atempo=1.1" -c:v libx264 -x264-params "nal-hrd=cbr" -b:v 2.5M -minrate 2.5M -maxrate 2.5M -bufsize 5M video1_faster.mp4

Step 3.
Create a text file of this content:
file 'video1_faster.mp4'
file 'video2.mp4'

Step 4 (first attempt).
ffmpeg -f concat -safe 0 -i ffmpeg_concat_list.txt -c copy final.mp4

Step 4 (second attempt) (with re-encoding).
ffmpeg -i video1_faster.mp4 -i video2.mp4 -filter_complex "[0:v] [0:a] [1:v] [1:a] concat=n=2:v=1:a=1 [v] [a]" -map "[v]" -map "[a]" -b:v 2.5M -minrate 2.5M -maxrate 2.5M -bufsize 5M final.mp4

What am I doing wrong? Thanks.

The two files separate are OK?  What version of ffmpeg?

@rogerdpack Yes. version N-82889-g54931fd Copyright (c) 2000-2016 the FFmpeg developers built with gcc 5.4.0 (GCC)

couple years old, git master "may" work better who knows...

Step 4 (first attempt) will work if you re-encode the 2nd video like the first (without the filters).
What's happening is that besides the timescale difference between CC's output and ffmpeg's (which will only result in timing errors), x264 is producing a High profile stream with a different parameter set than CC's encoder. Re-encode the 2nd video with ffmpeg and your files should be matching. Alternatively, you can speed up in CC and export the 1st video.

Wow, this simple idea somehow eluded me. Thanks. Even though I strongly prefer to avoid re-encoding whenever possible, I might be willing in this scenario since I haven't found a better solution. P.S. In my experience, FFmpeg does a better job than Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2017 at speeding up a video while preserving audio pitch. Premiere's sounded pretty bad, surprisingly.

Export the audio separately and filter+encode+mux it with CC speeded video. No need to re-encode video then.

This seemed to work (roughly*):
ffmpeg -i video1_faster.mp4 -i video2.mp4 -filter_complex "[0:v] [0:a] [1:v] [1:a]  concat=n=2:v=1:a=1 [v] [a]" -map "[v]" -map "[a]" -c:v libx264 -x264-params "nal-hrd=cbr" -b:v 2.5M -minrate 2.5M -maxrate 2.5M -bufsize 5M final.mp4

Notice how I'd been missing the -c:v libx264 -x264-params "nal-hrd=cbr" part in "Step 4 (second attempt)" in my question above.
*It decreased the bitrate of the audio to 103kbps even though the audio bitrates of the 2 input files were 317kbps and 127kbps. So my next project will be to try to figure out how to improve Step 2 to preserve the audio bitrate of the original file and then improve Step 4 to preserve the audio bitrates again.
I'd definitely prefer to accept someone else's (better) answer.

I wouldn't pay much attention to Wistia's or most other site's bitrate guidelines. They are issued for a mass audience and are meant to be safe floors since most consumer and even pro video editors don't have encoders that do VBR well. Not the case for x264/5 and ffmpeg/fdk AAC. If it looks and sounds good, you're fine.

@Gyan That's probably generally true. In this case, it wasn't a guideline to the public but from an email discussion between me and the Wistia support team since my video wasn't performing well on different devices, and their instruction was to re-upload the video at at least 2500kbps.


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Create CGI spider animation
Where would I start if I would like to have a spider animation that I can put over a video of a person sleeping and have the spider crawl out of their mouth.
I tried looking into Blender but that seems more for 3D models and less about animations.

No, Blender does animation as well. Here's an example of a spider animated with it:

However rigging and animating a realistic octopod is not exactly the kind of project you'd start with as a newbie. There's a lot to learn.
But if you want to have a go, you could start with this tutorial on rigging a spider's leg in Blender:
https://www.blendernation.com/2011/03/16/how-to-rig-a-spider-leg-in-blender-2-5-tutorial/


text:
Small Indie Production and Insurance
I'm supporting some friends for a small web series and we're trying to figure out a budget. As I research, I'm reading a lot about permits and insurance and so forth. We are not even a real production company and are mostly hiring friends and such. To what extent do we need get workers comp and other forms of insurance to make this small budget short?

We live in Los Angeles.
We will need permits for public locations.
We do plan on hiring friends for cast and crew.
We were also thinking about hiring kids but I'm starting to think that is not possible with our budget.

I've struggled with a similar question, although everything that I have done has been so small that I've usually been able to dance around it. I'll say this, from a liability standpoint the greater the size of your cast & crew and the greater your production, the more that you want to at least look into "General Liability". If you're working with animals, pyro, a lot of moving traffic, swimming/diving, aerial cinematography, things like that. You really have to look at the scale of what you're doing. Once you move away from a one-person or small-group hobbyist into hiring cast & crew, it's time to at least talk to insurance brokers. If for no other reason than to protect yourself, your employees, and your overall production.
You want to make sure that you go through a broker who is primarily an Entertainment Insurance Broker. I could go on for hours however my knowledge here is limited. I found an article last year that really helped me with the bullet points on all of this. I used this to educate myself on what I need going forward. Check out this link...
https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/the-producers-guide-to-film-production-insurance/


text:
vhs to digital conversion flickers only when captured
I have a Diamond One Touch Video Capture.  When I view the video on my computer is is great, but when I select capture, the video and audio flicker.  These are old home videos.  I tried a commercial movie video and it didn't flicker.  I don't think it is the One Touch because the videos do not flicker when viewed on my computer, only when being captured.  The capture software is Power Director and EZ Grabber.  I have tried two different VCRs.  Diamond has sent me a second One Touch.  Any suggestions?

Can you share a sample? NTSC or PAL? I'm assuming the tapes don't have copy protection, like Macrovision, right?

So once captured the file plays without these issues it's only during recording ?
Or are you saying that while the video is playing from the recorder but the computer is not recording it's okay & then when you try to record it has those issues ?
It could be an incorrect field setting in the software or buffering during recording.
Have a look at the software recorders settings & see if there's something for fields "upper" or "lower" or possible even deinterlace.
Are you recording to an external drive or straight to your hard drive ? If you have the option try recording to a different drive.
And like Michael said if you upload a sample we can better see the issue


text:
How to align two videos from different angles of the same event
I have two videos of the same event. You can see people walking, making the same moves, from a different angle. There is music playing.
Now I want to edit both videos in FCP 10.4.3 and fade from one video into the other. I'll use one audio track and mute the other. Video 2 starts later and ends earlier. Video 2 is layered upon (overlaps) video 1.

Is there a way to move video 2 relative to video 1 with keys instead of the mouse? I need steps that are just 1 frame.
Is there a way to see both layers at the same time, video 1 and video 2, to sync the steps?
Is there a way to sync audio while keeping the video in sync with the audio? Like audio 1 in left ear, audio 2 in right ear or something like that?

Maybe there are excellent tutorials for this, but I'm probably using the wrong words for searching. I can't find them.

To elaborate on this as long as both files has reasonable audio of the same event you can sync by both files into a single Multicam clip using sync by audio.
Now when you can cut by switching angles
https://support.apple.com/kb/PH12659?locale=en_AU&viewlocale=en_US
has more on sync by audio, alternatively search on youtube for a Multicam tutorial.

Sounds like you should try Multicam Multicam workflow - Apple support.
The cut you make between both angles can be anything e.g. dissolve or blend.
To move clips with the keyboard you need to select it and type comma or full stop. FCPX keyboard shortcuts - Apple support


text:
project 3 separate videos synchronized
For an art installation I need to set up a synchronized projection of 3 separate videos:
hardware

1 PC with Windows 7
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 with 4 simultaneous outputs
3 projectors 1920 x 1080 (I don't know the type yet)
if necessary: 1 monitor 1920 x 1080 for user interface

video files

3 separate video files
resolution 1920 x 1080
all 3 videos have exactly the same length: 18 minutes
one video has sound, the two other videos are without sound

I need to play the videos synchronized with one player software which controls all 3 videos. The videos will be looped over 8 hours. They need to stay in exact sync frame by frame even after 8 hours.
The presentation is for a major art event with a large number of visitors. Therefore I am looking for a very stable, professional solution.
After some research (e.g. How to set up a 3-screen video installation to sync correctly?) I see the following possibilities:
1.
I could combine all 3 videos in one large video with a width of 3 x 1920 = 5760 and a height of 1080. Then I can play one single video (e.g. with VLC player).
advantages:

I reduced the problem to showing one video. Everything will stay in sync.

problems:

The player software has to able to show the video fullscreen without window borders on the complete desktop (3 monitors with 1920 x 1080). (However I can use NVIDIA's Surround to combine the 3 monitors to one single monitor with 5760 x 1080)
If there is a slight shift in the player software or some processing/rounding errors in the projectors I might have some pixel lines of the center video show up in the other projections. (I had already experienced such effects with projectors before).

2.
I could use a software which can show the 3 separate videos in sync.
So far I had a look at VJ software like Resolume Avenue (https://resolume.com/) or Arkaos GrandVJ XT (https://www.arkaos.net/).
problems:

Will the videos stay exactly in sync even after hours?
These software programs might to be to complex for the task.

Are there other possible solutions?
If someone has some experience on this field I would be nice to share his/her ideas.
regarding possible solution 2.: Are there other specialized professional software for playing the 3 videos in sync?


text:
Adobe Premiere Background Processes
Premiere keeps running in the background, eating up a lot of RAM, but I can't figure out why. I have to keep manually stopping it.

In addition to this, the program keeps refusing to have video playback. It will do audio of the videos but not the videos themselves. I've tried everything that I can find on the internet and NOTHING works.
Have any of you experienced this before?
Thanks

A reinstall with the CC Cleaner could do the trick: https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/kb/cc-cleaner-tool-installation-problems.html

That's not really a large allocation of memory for Premiere. It's only holding as private memory just under 4GB.
My recommendation would be to add additional memory to you system.
I personally would recommend a minimum of 32 GB, but if your overhead is low in general, you can get away with less and not have any issues.

Sorry if I wasn't clear. It's not the RAM usage that bothers me during use. This happens when I'm NOT using the software. It's closed.


text:
Codec for video surveillance assuming non-changing scenes
Are there video codecs, which automatically and effectively compress static scenes? For example, if we have the same room shown at the same light, this codec should produce zero or very low extra bytes.

All modern encoders do this - x264, x265, vp8/9..

Noise make sequence of frames slightly different and non zero comprssion. 3d (2d+temporal) noise reduction before compression may be good idea.


text:
Looking for an alternative to Pamela for Skype for podcast recordings
I've been using the software Pamela for Skype for recording podcasts.  The newest versions of Skype no longer support 3rd party applications.  What is a good alternative going forward?  I was able to install an older version of Skype, but support for older versions of Skype will soon be discontinued.


text:
Loss of Colour Detail After Premiere Pro Render
I've been struggling with this issue for a while now as I record and upload video game footage onto YouTube. I record using OBS Studio then usually edit/render the video in Premiere Pro before uploading. I have noticed the video on YouTube looked a little washed out and I always thought it was just YouTube compressing things. However, recently I did a test where I uploaded the OBS Studio recorded footage directly to YouTube and realised it looked a lot better and upon closer inspection there seems to be a loss of colour or vibrancy going on. It's not just a flat desaturation though, as upping the saturation on the Premiere Pro render just makes all the colours look overly saturated while some points still look under saturated.
Here is an image that includes the two footage samples that were screenshotted off of YouTube after uploading, not in any media player on my PC, along with a detail comparison and my Premiere Pro render settings: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/282488029346791424/480420735580635136/Video-Render-Colour-Issue.jpg
Video is recorded to h.264 in OBS Studio and exported to h.264 from Premiere Pro.
I don't know if there is a solution to this or not but I would love to know why this would be happening in the first place. If anyone has an idea of what's going on I would greatly appreciate hearing your input or idea.
Thank you!

Try capturing to a uncompressed format in OBS, and then import your footage into premiere as DNxHR HQ (for HD) or DNxHR HQX (for UHD). After doing this, cut as usual ensuring your renders also matching the DNxHR resolution of your premiere footage. Finally, export to H264 when you're ready to upload to YouTube. Test this out with 60 seconds of colourful footage. Does this workflow preserve the colour?

First, Youtube re-encodes anything you upload to it's own streaming format(s), creating multiple down-res'd versions from the file you upload.
So it's possible that:
1.) OBS is outputting a higher-bit rate or better codec than what you're outputting using Premiere.
2.) Browsers ignore for the most part (Chome), color profiles for video and photos, this can cause a lot of frustration wondering why colors look different in Photoshop/Premiere vs in Chrome. That said:
3.) From Bridge make sure your Color Settings are synced across all programs under the Edit Menu.
4.) Set to Web Color sRGB.
In the end, the hard truth is that you CANNOT control the "end result" in terms of how your video will look on youtube on any given computer. Because people have different monitors, different browsers, their monitors may be setup to non-sRGB profiles, etc.
It's very much the same as handing someone a Blu-Ray, that you've quality checked on your studio reference monitor to get the tonality you're aiming for. You have no idea what TV they will use when they take it home, and what Picture Profile they will have set, which can drastically alter the image they see.
Obviously however, whatever OBS is outputting is being converted into a format that Youtube is re-encoding to a file which you are more pleased with. The only solution is to try different output settings from Premiere. But honestly, it's a bit of a fruitless endeavor, as you have no control over how other people will see it; due to browser, color profile, monitor setup, etc.

Thank you for explaining!
After reading your reply, I tested more with bitrates to see if that affected anything. Seems like I can preserve some of the color, getting half way between the two examples in the image above, by setting the Maximum Bitrate to the highest it will go (300Mbps) and the Target to 60Mbps. It's not perfect and the file size can get pretty huge, but it's better than before.
I'm still not sure what OBS is doing that's better as that's set to record at 40Mbps. Maybe it's the NV12 Color Format, 709 YUV Color Space, or partial YUV Color Range? I'll keep messing.

I'm not familiar with OBS, but I would agree. It likely has something to do with the NV12 Color Format, Color Space, etc.  -- Each program has it's own idiosyncrasies. This is why it's important to establish well tested, and documented SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) for tasks such as these, as you can't be troubleshooting output colorspace issues with a client project that's due. 300mbps is absurd for h.264. I highly doubt you will see any difference between 30mbps (blu-ray quality) and even 60mbps, at least not to the naked eye, perhaps- maybe, possible with a scope.

But back to idiosynchrosies, each program has it's own. What ever OBS is outputting, it appears you're more pleased with the way Youtube's video processing/encoding engine manages the original file and conversion to it's own streaming formats. You could use VLC (free download) and use CTRL-i and CTRL-j to see the media information, and codec information respectively. See what information it gives you for your OBS output, but even if you identify the exact format/codec, and match it in Premiere/AME, it doesn't mean you'll get the same results matching those output settings in AME.

Reason being, Adobe has it's own rendering engine, and the way it transcodes a sequence to "final output codec" is likely propriatary to adobe (speaking in terms of the encoding process itself). A great example of this is with Adobe AfterEffects, and why, on output, the only way to get a truly high quality output of a rendered composition is to export as Quicktime - Codec: Animation. Why, from AE, exporting an H.264 direct produces less than perfect / far from identical quality than the same content exported from Premiere is a mystery to me... but AE doesn't handle H.264 well.

Final thought, the one thing you could do is apply a top layer video track to your sequence in premiere, and add fast color corrector as an effect track/adjustment track. Then tweak the color correction until... to raise/lower the RGB gain where needed.  You would edit with it off, then turn on for export. The video may look off in premiere, but you'd get an output that then matches your OBS output.


text:
Converting text file to a video with speech
I have several long text files and I'm looking forward to convert them into a video with synced text-to-speech voice. Because texts are long, an animation/slide/pagination will be required on video. Also if possible I would like to add background image too.
A good example can be seen here.
Is there any way to automate this task? And also the result videos license should allow me to freely distribute videos. If automation is not an option, how can I create this videos easily?

Have you looked at AviSynth/VapourSynth? They're able to generate videos using code (AviSynth has its own language, while VapourSynth users Python)


text:
How to slow down a typography effect in after effects?
I'm using Adobe After Effects 2014 and I have got a royalty-free template of a typography effect. And it's really fast, I want to increase the duration of the effect(when the text is in focus in the video so I can give it a bit more reading time) without distorting it by like slowing the whole video down. How can I do that?

you need to include more information. is it keyframed? is it using an animator? is it using expressions?

Assuming that it is a template applied to a text layer in a comp, select the text layer and press "u" to reveal any keyframes on that layer.  Drag the keyframes out to the duration you need.
If the comp isn't long enough, press Command K to reveal the comp settings, extend the duration.  Extend the duration of the text layer by dragging the end of it further to the right.


text:
Video conversion
I'd like to convert quite a few BDMV files to MKV files. I know you can do this with MakeMKV, which isn't freeware. Are there any good freeware programs out there to accomplish this?
Also, is the only file I need MovieObject.bdmv? Can I delete the rest of the files?

Use Handbrake. If you want to know which files you can delete, copy them to a folder, move out the files you think can be deleted. Then do the conversion and see if sound and video and if needed subtitles are all converted. If not, move the files back and keep trying and testing.

@SPRBRN good tip for figuring out which files can and cant be removed

If you're up for using the command line, the best tool hands-down is ffmpeg. It can convert pretty much any video format out there into pretty much any other video format, it's free, open source, and in many cases faster and better than paid-for software (I use it in preference to Adobe media converter when I can). Downside is that you need to know a little about the command line shell of your OS. Actually that's not a downside–ffmpeg is a great gateway drug to the awesome power contained within the command line.

If you're not ready to take the red pill (or is it the blue one?), then Handbrake is probably the next cab off the rank. A very useful GUI video converter that has long outlived its original purpose of being the tool of choice for ripping DVDs (shiny disks with standard definition video content from a mythical time long ago). Handbbrake uses ffmpeg tech to do its magic, and it's open source and free as well.
If those two don't do it then it's actually highly likely that nothing else actually will. As a side note, a lot of the commercial video converters out there are just graphical front-ends for ffmpeg, and if you read the fine print you might find out you're essentially paying for a free product.

I've already used ffmpeg. Didn't know i could use it to rewrap BDMVs tho. Um... is the only file I need to keep the MovieObject.bdmv? Also, i haven't used ffmpeg in a while, so can you give me a one liner to convert, something like 'filepath.ext' -a codec -v codec 'filepath.ext' iirc?

ffmpeg something 'input-filepath.ext' -acodec -vcodec 'output-filepath.ext' something like this i believe

AFAIK the default settings for mkv are pretty good, (they use h.264) so you can just use ffmpeg -i input-filepath.ext output-path.mkv. You'll have to research the docs for more settings, I don't use mkv much except with ffv1 for archiving.

ahhh that was it, it was the -i setting that i forgot about


text:
Why does people seem transparent in this video
People seem transparent in that video. What does explain that?
I posted on the Physics community, believing that it was related to some optical effect. But I've been told that it may be related to video compression.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BmJDU1Snd1O/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=1qwkhrbxglb3q

What did I just watch?

That's a minor celebrity known as a (kinda) funny soccer commentator doing the so called (by not much people) "the pidgeon dance".


text:
Source ProRes 422 Proxy / Edit / Export to ProRes 422 proxy?
Wondering what exporting best practice is when working on source clips that are captured ProRes 422 Proxy.
I've c-corrected/graded these clips in DaVinci.
When it's time to 'Add to Render Queue', do I select ProRes 422 Proxy again or LT or higher?

Definitely proRes 422HQ.
While you won't gain anything by encoding in a higher quality codec, what you will do is avoid losing more.
Proxy codecs are just that: stand-ins for the real content, their job is not to faithfully encode the material, it's to be lightweight and easy to play, so you can swap in the full quality copy later. Whoever it was that shot Proxy, give them a whack upside the head to remind them not to do it again.
Export to proRes422 HQ as your master, if you need copies that don't take up so much space, say for delivery on the web, then transcode to h.264.


text:
GStreamer: RTMP to RTP
I want to streaming RTMP signal to RTP(multicast, mpegts container) via GStreamer. As I understand, I need to perform the following actions (please correct me if I wrong):

Demuxing RTMP stream
Muxing tracks to MPEGTS
Streaming data into RTP

I can perform it via FFmpeg:
ffmpeg -i rtmp://184.72.239.149/vod/mp4:bigbuckbunny_750.mp4 \
       -c copy -f rtp_mpegts rtp://127.0.0.1:10001

I need to achive the same results via GStreamer and I've tried the next command:
gst-launch-1.0 -v rtmpsrc \
           location=rtmp://184.72.239.149/vod/mp4:bigbuckbunny_750.mp4 \
           ! flvdemux ! h264parse ! rtph264pay \
           ! udpsink host=127.0.0.1 port=10001

Setting pipeline to PAUSED ...
Pipeline is PREROLLING ...
ERROR: from element /GstPipeline:pipeline0/GstRTMPSrc:rtmpsrc0: Internal data flow error.
Additional debug info:
gstbasesrc.c(2948): gst_base_src_loop (): /GstPipeline:pipeline0/GstRTMPSrc:rtmpsrc0:
streaming task paused, reason not-linked (-1)
ERROR: pipeline doesn't want to preroll.
Setting pipeline to NULL ...
/GstPipeline:pipeline0/GstFlvDemux:flvdemux0.GstPad:audio: caps = "NULL"
Freeing pipeline ...

Please help figure out with. What is the correct command to streaming RTMP to RTP without transcoding via GStreamer?

If anyone runs across this, the pipeline in the OP is correct but you can further debug this with the GST_DEBUG=3 env variable.


text:
Recommendations needed for a low cost dolly in an arc, not a straight line
I need to find a low cost dolly setup for a round table shoot.  I'd ideally use a Wally Dolly, but they don't make the tracks in curved sections.  Can anyone recommend dolly setups of a roughly similar cost which will work in this situation?

I remember seeing a wally style setup with flexible pipes for tracks once. Can't remember where though.


text:
Do key commands exist to navigate up and down Final Cut Pro Timeline?
I Have a massive timeline (image below). I scroll above the fold (yes there are even more clips above these)....yet I need to go back to the primary story line and it is becoming VERY tedious to do so. Is there not a key command to bring the primary story line into view?

This article might help.
Select a clip with the keyboard

Would be super useful to 'select main stroyline' or some such, but the best I have found is:
Select the clip under the pointer in the timeline c
Select the clip above the current timeline selection at the skimmer or playhead location ⌘↑ (cmd + up-arrow)
Select the clip below the current timeline selection at the skimmer or playhead location ⌘↓ (cmd + down-arrow)
The other possibility is use ⇧⌘- (Shift + Cmd + Hyphen) to decrease the clip size quickly to see more of the timeline, and increase with ⇧⌘= (Shift + Cmd + Equals)


text:
ffmpeg - Stretch 4:3 video to 16:9
I have a video track that is a 4:3 video with pillarboxing/black bars on the side making it a 16:9 video. The resolution of the video is 960x540 (16:9).
How would I remove the blackbars and then stretch it to 16:9 to be a proper 16:9 video?
What I have:

What I want:

I'm assuming I want to use a -vf "crop=720:528:120:6" to remove the black bars from the side and the small one at the bottom, but how would I then stretch that to 16:9?
By the way, im hoping to end up with this video in the resolution: 960x540, meaning with the small 6 pixel removal of the small border under the video, im hoping to stretch that BACK to 540 from 534.

How were you able to determine the crop dimensions?

Add a scaler after the crop.
-vf "crop=720:528:120:6,scale=960:540,setsar=1"

The setsar is added to prevent players squashing the video during playback.

I think this can work for my scenario as well, however my MP4's resolution is 1280x720 and there's no black bar at the bottom as with Ma Dude's. I'm afraid I'm a beginner with FFMPG; could I impose upon you to ask for a translation to the entire command to use?

Ask a new Q showing your tried command and its full log.

OK, got it. Will do.


text:
Hardware or software Gen-Lock for different actioncams
I have a GoPro Hero 4 Black and a Rollei 5S Wifi looking at the same scene from a different angle.
How can I hardware - or later in software using ffmpeg - gen-lock them?
My ideas:
Software

interpolate between frames and align matching frames using machine learning

Hardware

Control them via wifi to start them at the same time. Still the question is when they actually start after getting the command and how to control them using only one wifi adapter or bluetooth adapter or whatever protocol they use. Without knowing that it will work, it's a lot of effort to do it.

I'm not sure there is really a good answer to this problem without custom hardware.  General wireless products aren't really going to be a great option as wifi and bluetooth will both have variable latency issues and missed packets.  What you'd really want is something akin to flash triggers, but capable of firing repeatedly at your frame rate.  It would need to be a custom wireless solution for the problem though.
On the software side, you can try frame interpolation, but I'm not sure that the quality loss associated wouldn't be worse than the minor timing difference of not being gen-locked.  It still isn't going to match up exactly as it is a guess rather than what actually happened.
This is also ignoring the fact that rolling shutter greatly reduces the advantage of gen-lock to begin with.  The sensor itself is taking time to read the scene and so not even the top and bottom of the frame are truly in sync.  Genlocking is really something that more mattered for doing live switching where you needed to be able to keep a constant frame sequence and needed a frame to send.  It can also be useful in fine tuning audio/video sync, but that's pretty secondary to the technical needs to it, especially if you are shooting high framerate video.
That may actually be the real solution to your problem too.  If you shoot at a higher frame rate than your intended final product, you'll have frames much closer in timing to each other and can pick which frames to use.  This will work best if it's an even multiple, but pull downs may also work acceptably.  So if you shot 60 fps and were planning on going with 30, you could pick your frames to pull out to make sure you were at most half a frame off and on average be only 1/4 frame off.  That's a pretty tight sync without needing any weird magic.


text:
MPEG-4 Mediainfo, what's "Format Profile"?
I'm wondering what the Format Profile tag/field refers to.
(Backstory: I have a couple MPEG-4 videos (I made) on a NAS which won't stream through my X-box 360 (but will stream on any other computer, ditto a Roku box) so I ran them through mediainfo to see if there were any difference with other videos that stream fine  -- made with the same settings.)
Format Profile shows a value of "Sony PSP" which is odd to me, since I've not intentionally chosen anything to do Sony. I'm making these with a custom profile I made (from a very slightly tweaked preset in Powerdirector) that's pretty much a medium-high quality 720p x.264 profile. I assume that powerdirector is somehow filling in that field (though I can't see it anywhere in the settings for the profile) or is this something that Mediainfo is assuming based on the characteristics of the video?


text:
resend headers NUT formats
If I do this
ffmpeg -f dshow -video_size 720x480 -framerate 29.97 -i video="Roxio Video Capture USB":audio="Line (Roxio Video Capture USB)" -c:v mjpeg -c:a pcm_s16le -map 0:v -map 0:a -f fifo -fifo_format nut -drop_pkts_on_overflow 1 tcp://localhost:6600
I can connect to TCP from a player only once.  The NUT headers are in the FIFO and part of the video stream is dropped so I stay close to real-time, but if I disconnect I've lost the nut headers and no player will reconnect even though the TCP port is still sending data.  Is there any way, BESIDES USING MPEG Transport Stream, to resend the headers?

Although probably not best practice, this seems to do the trick:
Take a NUT file, same codec and dimensions;
ffmpeg -i nutfile1.nut -frames 2 -c:a copy -c:v copy -f nut nutheader.nut
And then a little piping hijinks:
nc 192.168.1.161 6600 | cat nutheader.nut - | ffmpeg -i pipe:0 -c:a copy -c:v copy -map 0:a -map 0:v -f fifo -fifo-format nut -drop_pkts_on_overflow 1 pipe:1 | nc -L -p 6601
You get a 'discontinuous DTS' when you connect the first time and headers are duplicated, but whatever.
And you get one 'packet damaged' when you start the standard input after the headers, but it immediately and with extremely low latency resynchronizes.


text:
Continuously rasterize changes the position of a line
I'm editing an incredibly complex template I've bought. I want to zoom in deeply on a line in the composition. Now this line will turn into a blurry mess without 'continuously rasterize' turned on.
So I have to use that feature. When I turn it on, the line changes position for no apparent reason.

How can I avoid this?

Could it be that the line has an anchor point that disagrees with the rest of the composition?  Or could it be that the continuously-rasterize feature introduces a non-zero anchor point at some point?  You could check the value of the anchor point after the malignant operation.


text:
mp4 to wmv AND file compression
I have a mp4 from a video created in iMovie 10.
  The original output is about 1.5 GB.
I uploaded it to youtube to use their compression and re-downloaded.
I now have an mp4 at 236mb.
I need to upload this video for a submission but it needs to be under 100mb and a wmv format. At this point I don't know if I can get it lower than 236mb without sacrificing quality (with my limited knowledge of video production). I also do not currently have a way to convert the mp4 to a wmv.
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
Best,
-Josh

Whos asking for a wmv?

YouTube automatically transcodes all files uploaded to it's server into it's own streaming codecs, and also creates down-converted files which are lower in resoultion and bit-rate to allow for different streaming options based on the viewers connection speed.
How long is your original video? If YouTube transcoded your native resolution video file from 1.5GB to 250 ish MB, (hypothetically assuming this 1080p we're talking about), then your file is bloated as far as YouTube is concerned.
100 MB isn't a lot of space to work with. And you are not going to find any highly adjustable tools to hit that 100MB mark online. Your options will  be limited to either something like Adobe Media Encoder (pay per month), or FFMPEG, command line/learning curve, or VLC, which is robust but not very good with encoding.
If you want to PM me a dropbox link with the 1.5 GB file, I can run it through AME and hit your 100mb mark. It's just a drag and drop, and I'll simply re-encode it back to your shared dropbox folder. Or you can simply subscribe to a 1 month rental of Adobe Premiere which comes with AME, and adjust/play with the settings.


text:
Video to Lens Flare on After Effects
I am editing this after effects template. Two flares are there in the package as two separate videos. How do I use them in the video? When I add like this, it shows only the flare without background video. Thank you.

It's because the template you're using is referencing video files, or still images - the Lens Flare effect, which do not use an alpha channel.
This was likely done deliberatly by the template author to prevent bloating the template file size, especially if it's a motion/video file. A video flare that moves, using an alpha channel would be huge in size depending on resolution and length.
So thats WHY.
The work around is you need to set the layer's Blending Mode to a setting other than Normal. Normal will simply place the file as is... what you are now seeing. Black with Flare, nothing underneath.
RIGHT CLICK THE CLIP -> Blending Modes -> SET AS:
You will get different results with different Modes. Typically for flares, I'd use either Screen, Soft Light, Hard Light, or Multiply. You may get interesting effects with other options such as Vivid Light.
But these modes will essentially matte out areas, depending on setting, to get a superimposed effect of the flare over underlying layers.


text:
How to make flickering white spots and moving effects in After Effect
I want to know how to make those particle-like spots and you see the transparent effects and the fast moving text? I want to know what that effect is called and how to make it. Please help me!(Please watch the video first)
Also, how do I make that smoke effect behind the text?

Stock footage. The spots and fast moving text are from old film leaders. When you are projecting film the first dozen feet or so is the "leader" it protects the inner film from dust and scratches, and lets you thread the projector. It often has the name of the reel written on it. That's what you're seeing over the video.
Prelinger film archive has plenty of old films with leaders, many of which are in the public domain. Composite one over your footage with the luma inverted, and adjust the brigtness / contrast and opacity until you get the look you want.
The "smoke" is probably ink in water. It's a common stock footage effect.

The stock footage that Stib is referring to is being overlaid on top of the original footage using a different composition mode - maybe multiply, overlay, or screen.  Try out several and see which works for you.
https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/6-useful-blending-modes-effects/
The text is being inverted by the footage behind it - could be achieved using Invert and Stencil Alpha


text:
How to stretch an image in vegas? Tips? (Reference image in body)

That's as far as I had gone, I am trying to fit the image in the box but I just can't figure it out. no matter how much I stretch it or rotate it,  it just doesn't work
Here's another image so you guys know my pan/crop settings

and if you need to try it yourself, here's a green screen. if you at least get a still frame I guess I can animate it from there (Though, actually tell me how did you get it to work)

I also wonder, if I already have the mask, and it's already animated and stuff, could that help me?
Edit:Wait, do you guys need a green screen lol? I am going to leave it there just in case but I don't think you guys need it (Note:The green screen was made by me, by using the mask. I got the mask with the keyframes, I really hope that's useful)

I believe most of this effect can be achieved using Deform FX.
For true perspective, you need 3D track motion.
I have not used either but here are some links:
Perspective
How do I skew a video clip?

It's been so long that I even forgot about this, I still have the project file so I'll try, thanks man

I can't make it work with deform fx, but maybe I am just not trying hard enough, this effect is hard to understand
I tried 3d track motion and well, I feel blessed but at the same time it didn't do enough of a good job. I tried and I just can't make it work, if there's something else to know or if in the future I learn something I'll go back to editing this


text:
Multiple Audio Sources for Audio Spectrum
how can I have more than 1 audio source at the same time for the Audio Spectrum effect of After Effects? Thank you.
I'm using After Effects.
(I tried to upload an image, but it there is an error)

Place your multiple audio sources into a comp, then place that comp into the comp where your audio spectrum effect is going to be.  Point the Audio Spectrum effect at the comp with your multiple layers within it, and they should all affect it together.


text:
Convert LUT formats
Is there a reliable and somewhat user-friendly way to convert between different LUT formats? I have been searching for a way and find pretty much nothing.
My specific problem at hand is that I have .csp LUT created in Nuke and I would like to apply it directly in my NLE (Premiere or possibly Resolve), however no software I have at hand supports .csp format. I assume it should not be that hard to convert between LUT formats, but it seems like there is almost no software capable of doing that.

YOu could take a look here:
http://opensource.mikrosimage.eu/ColorPipe-tools/LUTLab/LUT_to_LUT/
But this may not give you 100% color accuracy


text:
How to upload video to YouTube with VP09 & Opus 251
I would like to know how big artists send their videos to YouTube and in what format to have VP09 with OPUS 251 in Audio ?
I tried a lot of format HD H.264 AVI but Youtube keep my video in mp4 with bad audio quality .
How can i do to have the same format like professional videos youtube ?

What device are you reading the VP9 and Orbis codec information from? These are hardware limited, so the options may not be available on your device.


text:
What's the difference between TV and cinema motion?
In reading to understand shutter speed better, I found a consistent claim that setting shutter speed to 1/(2×fps) makes "cinematic" motion and 1/fps makes "TV" motion. Example
That's great and all, if I knew what it's supposed to mean. I understand that a slower shutter will make more blur on individual frames, so a more natural motion. Is that all this cinema vs TV motion example meant to say?

It is a combination of frame rate, shutter speed and depth of field, and everyone has their own perception of what looks natural. Speaking generally, if you have more frames per second you have more freedom to either make them sharper or blurrier, smoother or stuttery compared to when you have fewer frames per second, where you have to obey established movie practices to avoid excessive stutter.

I don't know where they have "TV motion" from as at least in my area we use 1/(2×fps) for TV too. Or higher for sports.
1/(2×fps) simply has a "natural" motion blur to it which is often used in cinema as it is often the best choise.
A shutter slower than that has much more shutter, I describe it as dream like.
A shutter faster than that often looks like a robot, with each image being sharp and jumpy.
The first can be used in slow scenes as it won't be really notable.
The seconde one can be used in for example sports TV so you can really see each detail and it isn't blured out


text:
Character animation. Linking child and parent layers in After Effects using Duik 16
I am currently attempting to animate a character using Duik 16 but I am having trouble linking some of the body parts so they stay connected.
I imported an illustrator layered file into After Effects and was methodical in my approach creating layers for the body parts of the character.
To illustrate further, I used the puppet warp tool at 3 separate positions on the leg, then I created the bones from those pins using the DUIK 16 rigging plugin. From those bones I was then able to create a controller using the auto rig button to allow the body part to bend about. The eventual goal is to be able to create a walking cycle.
I followed suit with this method using the tutorial in the video link here as a basis. I would like the rear foot (in its own layer) to move as a child of the rear leg layer. For example when the leg moves upwards the rear foot should stay connected. I understand you can use the auto rig feature on the entire body if the parts are carefully named, however I wish to just warp the leg with the controller to get the same effect. I have uploaded an attached image to illustrate the problem. There is a parent constraint button which looks like it was designed for this sort of issue but I am having difficulty finding any documentation on how to use it online. I tried parenting the rear leg and rear foot layer but to no avail.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hard to know exactly without having the project to look at. What happens if you parent the foot to the controller, so that movement and rotation applied to the controller is applied to the foot?

Try parenting the foot-graphic-layer / it's parent to the ankle-controller.


text:
What are the names of the video effects used in this video link
Here is the video link:

Below are the time stamps
1:00-1:03
1:15
2:17-2:19
I am still quite a novice. I would like to attempt these myself, but do not know the names of the effects, which will allow me to do research and self teach.
Any help will be much appreciated.
Thank you

Those are simply called glitch effects :)

Ok, thank you. Based on your answer, is there a software that you would recommend that includes these types of glitch effects?

As I only use professional grade software which don't really include such effects to dragand drop I cant help you with this question. But you can easily do it yourself in Premiere Pro, After Effects, Final Cut...


text:
Error:-[libx264 @ 000001fa2ffdd080] height not divisible by 2 (244x207)
I was looking to put an audio visualiser filter on my podcast file(mp3)and got the necessary code from here.But on running the code,the terminal gave an error"height not divisible by 2".I tried my best to apply the solution from here but it didn't work.Any suggestions would be helpful.
Code:

ffmpeg -y -i audio.mp3 -loop 1 -i image.jpg -filter_complex "[0:a]showwaves=s=1280x175:colors=White:mode=p2p,format=yuv420p[v];[1:v][v]overlay=0:200[outv]" -map "[outv]" -pix_fmt yuv420p -map 0:a -c:v libx264 -c:a copy -shortest output12.mp4

Error Log:

ffmpeg version N-90762-g223f3dff8c Copyright (c) 2000-2018 the FFmpeg developers
    built with gcc 7.3.0 (GCC)
    configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-version3 --enable-sdl2 --enable-bzlib --enable-fontconfig --enable-gnutls --enable-iconv --enable-libass --enable-libbluray --enable-libfreetype --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libopus --enable-libshine --enable-libsnappy --enable-libsoxr --enable-libtheora --enable-libtwolame --enable-libvpx --enable-libwavpack --enable-libwebp --enable-libx264 --enable-libx265 --enable-libxml2 --enable-libzimg --enable-lzma --enable-zlib --enable-gmp --enable-libvidstab --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvo-amrwbenc --enable-libmysofa --enable-libspeex --enable-libxvid --enable-libaom --enable-libmfx --enable-amf --enable-ffnvcodec --enable-cuvid --enable-d3d11va --enable-nvenc --enable-nvdec --enable-dxva2 --enable-avisynth
    libavutil      56. 15.100 / 56. 15.100
    libavcodec     58. 19.100 / 58. 19.100
    libavformat    58. 13.100 / 58. 13.100
    libavdevice    58.  4.100 / 58.  4.100
    libavfilter     7. 18.100 /  7. 18.100
    libswscale      5.  2.100 /  5.  2.100
    libswresample   3.  2.100 /  3.  2.100
    libpostproc    55.  2.100 / 55.  2.100
  [mp3 @ 000001fa2ffdabc0] Estimating duration from bitrate, this may be inaccurate
  Input #0, mp3, from 'fast.mp3':
    Duration: 00:00:13.98, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 128 kb/s
      Stream #0:0: Audio: mp3, 44100 Hz, stereo, fltp, 128 kb/s
  Input #1, png_pipe, from 'scott.png':
    Duration: N/A, bitrate: N/A
      Stream #1:0: Video: png, rgb24(pc), 244x207 [SAR 1:1 DAR 244:207], 25 fps, 25 tbr, 25 tbn, 25 tbc
  Stream mapping:
    Stream #0:0 (mp3float) -> showwaves
    Stream #1:0 (png) -> overlay:main
    overlay -> Stream #0:0 (libx264)
    Stream #0:0 -> #0:1 (copy)
  Press [q] to stop, [?] for help
  [libx264 @ 000001fa2ffdd080] height not divisible by 2 (244x207)
  Error initializing output stream 0:0 -- Error while opening encoder for output stream #0:0 - maybe incorrect parameters such as bit_rate, rate, width or height
  Conversion failed!

Set size in showwaves to 1280x176.

@Gyan tried 1280x174,1280x175,1280x176  - not working

Use
ffmpeg -y -i audio.mp3 -loop 1 -i image.jpg -filter_complex "[1:v]scale=2*trunc(iw*sar/2):2*trunc(ih/2)[bg];[0:a]showwaves=s=1280x175:colors=White:mode=p2p,format=yuv420p[v];[bg][v]overlay=0:200[outv]" -map "[outv]" -pix_fmt yuv420p -map 0:a -c:v libx264 -c:a copy -shortest output12.mp4
Since the image is the base layer, its dimensions should be made even.

It looks like FFmpeg scaling doesn't work well on "odd dimensions". I manually changed the image dimensions to 244×207 to 244×208 [even] (using MS Paint resize option) now everything works fine!

It looks like ffmpeg scaling doesn't work well on "odd dimensions" --> what does this mean?

odd is the opposite of even, They are numbers that are not multiples of 2.

you didn't use scale in your original command. It's not only ffmpeg's issue - the x264 codec requires the output to be divisible by 2 (both height and width). Therefor if you feed an image with not divisible by 2 dimensions, you must scale it: filter_complex "1 scale=244:208 [img]" or you can pad it with color pixel "1 pad=h=208 [img]" see more in docs.


text:
How to Stabilize Hyperlapse Footage Like GoPro Hypersmooth?
How would you stabilise footage in post to the smoothness level of GoPro Hypersmooth automatically?
From what I have seen from online videos, the videos are way more stable than warp stabilised hyperlapses. I have also noticed that the faster (longer) the GoPro footage, the more stable it is. I suspect that they are selecting the best frames to put in the video and then run another round of electronic stabilisation. If I am not mistaken, warp stabiliser uses every single frame and warps them and thus will never be able to reach the GoPro stability of skipping unwanted frames.
Is there any way to do this automatically or semi-automatically? If GoPro can do it in a small package in seconds, it should be achievable in a powerful computer rig.
This is not only useful for handheld footage, but also gimbal/steadicam footage.

Go Pro uses data from sensors it has (Like roation) this enables a way smoother stabilisation

Yeah, I was hoping to get at least close to the effect GoPro achieves (i.e. skipping frames instead of stabilising all of them)

You could try this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr9DF5iSSk4

I'm still trying to figure this out. I know how to fix this frame by frame, that's not the issue. Just figuring out what algorithm GoPro uses because it's obvious that they skip frames to stabilise - the hyperlapse gets smoother as the video gets longer since they have more frames.

These use a combination of sensory input to counteract movement and crop the video so it resides inside of a larger one allowing it to move around and remove movement. It's a software based gimbal. I'm not sure if there is any plugins for AE or similar yet to achieve such effects. As most software is closed source that does this.


text:
Transparent Footage - After Effects
I have a stock video that is transparent but when I import the footage into after effects it has a greyish/blue background (even when toggling transparency on). Is there something I need to specifically do to get it to be transparent?
It's a .mov file.

Please provide a screenshot

Select the footage in the project panel and press ctrl+alt+g. Under "Alpha" are the boxes all grey'd out?

I think what you're looking for is to toggle the transparency grid.
You can do this by finding the checkerboard-looking icon in the toolbar below the viewer.

I mentioned that the background stays even when toggling on transparency. So there is something else wrong here

I reckon the next thing I would do is change my background color (to pink) in composition settings and then change my blending mode from normal to multiply, overlay and screen to better see what the nature of the opaque elements in the clip are. Then I'd toggle my track matte visibility and toggle the modes there to see what happens.

Maybe the video isn't perfectly transparent?  In this case, I would try adding a levels effect to the video, and selecting the Alpha option in the effect, then adjust the lower level control to see if the issue gets better or worse.


text:
Frequency of Macbook fan sound
My macbook spins off the fan like crazy which is audible when I'm recording a video when I show some stuff in Photoshop for instance. I'm thinking I could try to filter it out in Premiere Pro with high/low pass filters or an equalizer and I'm wondering what frequency might that sound of the fan have?
Anyone tried to remove the fan sound with this method or maybe there is a better solution?

Screen recording definitely taxes laptop graphics cards and makes the fans whir. There's no easy way to avoid that.  I would instead try to use a mic that gets as close to your lips as possible (without popping), and move the laptop as far from your mouth as possible (external monitor / keyboard / mouse). The results will be better than trying to use noise reduction to improve the audio afterwards.  Noise follows an inverse square law, so a small increase in distance from your lips will result in a big decrease in noise, if your mic is much closer to the desirable source than it is to the undesirable source.


text:
Use Streaming Online Video/Live As Source In OBS Studio
Is this possible?
Use others or your own Facebook or YouTube live stream as source in obs or any broadcast software and then broadcast it on another page or channel.

Yes it is.. create a scene with your fullscreen browser and the video you want

This would be possible using OBS's BrowserSource.
First, find the embed code for the stream (in YouTube you can click "Share" and then "Embed"). Find the src="" and copy the URL that's inside the quotes. In OBS, create a new Browser. Paste the previously copied URL into the URL field, and set the Width and Height to your canvas size (or your preferred size).
If you need to press a play button, you can right-click the Browser and click Interact.
I hope this helps!

A better way to do this is to make a .html file with this content:
<iframe width="1920" height="1080"src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/[VIDEO ID]?&autoplay=1"frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

replacing [VIDEO ID] with the youtube video id, then going into OBS and adding it as a local browser. Then it'll work a lot faster as it just loads the files you want.

I know this is quite old, but I just figured it out, since the "embed" thing didn't work for me. Youtube blocks the view all the time with suggestions to log in or accept cookie messages.
Here is what you can do:

Open VLC locally
Go to "Open Network"
Paste your Youtube Video link
(VLC will convert the URL into a link to a playable video stream)
Save the playlist as .m3u file
Open the .m3u file in a text editor
Copy the line starting with "https://"
Open OBS
Add a "VLC Video Source"
Go to "playlist" and hit "+"
Paste the URL copied from VLC

Voilá! The video plays in the VLC source.

I would love to know why this got downvoted, it seems like a reasonable suggestion to me. Are there problems with this strategy?


text:
Animate a Slider With Json File Import?
So let me explain, I have a json file with numbers and the duration of how long each number should be displayed which is 4 seconds.
I want the slider to show the first number (which is 1,000) and then four seconds later display 2,000 (which is second number) . But have it showing all the numbers in between 1,000-2,000.
My array looks like this:
[
{
    "ID": 1,
    "slider": 1000,
    "duration": .4
},
{
    "ID": 2,
    "slider": 2000,
    "duration": .4
},
{
    "ID": 3,
    "slider": 3828.52,
    "duration": .4
}
]

And I have found a code that works, it starts at 0 seconds and animates 1,000 counting up to 2,000. The only problem with this code is that it has a delay, So when the animation starts it stays at 1,000 for about one whole second and then starts to animate counting up to 2,000 at the four second mark. Then same thing at the four second mark, it stays at 2,000 for a second and then animates. How do i prevent this delay? I would like it to be constant. Here is the code which works but causes the numbers to delay:
data = footage("example.json").sourceData;
rampTime = 3;
done = false;
i = t = tPrev = 0;
while (t <= time){
  tPrev = t;
  t += rampTime + parseFloat(data[i].duration)/ .4;
  i++;
  if (i >= data.length){
    done = true;
    break;
  }
}
if (done){
  parseFloat(data[data.length-1].slider);
}else{
  if ((time - tPrev) < parseFloat(data[i-1].duration)/ .4){
    parseFloat(data[i-1].slider);
  }else{
    v1 = parseFloat(data[i-1].slider);
    v2 = parseFloat(data[i].slider);
    t1 = parseFloat(data[i-1].duration)/ .4;
    t2 = t1 + rampTime;
    linear(time-tPrev,t1,t2,v1,v2);
  }
}
If you can help find the solution please explain to me i am very new to coding and this is pretty complicated to me.Thank you!

Good question Xavier! I had a similar job recently, here's how I did it.
First I would suggest re-working your json file to be a little easier to parse. For example (hopefully I got your intention correctly):
{
    "slider1": {
        "start": 1000,
        "end": 2000,
        "duration": 4,
        "ID": 1
    }
}

Then add two sliders to your layer, one called Anim Duration (seconds) with a default value of 4. If you want to read this value from the json file add the following expression instead:
var data = footage("example.json").sourceData;

data.slider1.duration

Okay now to the second slider (which is the one that actually animates) add the following expression:
var data = footage("example.json").sourceData;

start_value = data.slider1.start;
end_value = data.slider1.end;

step = (end_value - start_value) / effect("Anim Duration (seconds)")("Slider").value; // alternately you can just plug data.slider1.duration here instead of using a second slider...
count = Math.floor(step * (time - thisLayer.inPoint)); // you don't need to use the in-point here, but it is conventient if you know that's where you want to start your animation

if (count < e_value) {
    count;
} else {
    end_value;
}

(if you have any trouble with this let me know, I don't have AE handy for testing so this was mainly done from memory and a snipped I have on me...)


text:
Help me with lyrics sync
I am looking for a program that can help me sync lyrics.
I mean, I have txt with lyrics and I want program to be able to sync them with just press and release of any button. At end I want program to export to srt ar any other popular subtitle format.

please don't ask duplicate questions. Read [ask] and our [about] page for guidance.

MX player allows the lyrics (*.srt file) to be synchronized in mobile using its app .(subtitle->synchronization)
For laptop, you can use VLC player.


text:
How to use Creative Commons licensed videos on YouTube?
According to YouTube help center, Creative Commons licensed videos can be reused and edit.
But it is not allowed to download videos from YouTube, so how can i edit it?
YouTube Studio beta only allows to edit your uploaded videos.

As Dr Mayhem mentioned, if you can see it and it has an appropriate license, you are allowed to reuse it.
I would recommend also as they suggested to ask the author first if they can send you a copy somehow. Alternately, I think youtube-dl should have you covered for downloading directly. It's a command-line tool so you will have to use the shell of your OS (e.g. Command Prompt in Windows) to use it, but it's fairly easy to use and has a plethora of options for getting the exact quality you require. Generally you can probably get by with just calling it without any parameters e.g.:

youtube-dl www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxxxxx

Is Youtube DL officia,l release b y youtube?

@DheerajMPai no.

If you can see video, it is possible to reuse it - there are various applications that will let you use YouTube video, or you could record the screen using a camera, or your mobile phone etc.
Or you could ask the author.
There are many possibilities.


text:
What's the easiest way to cover up a seam in background paper behind video footage in Final Cut Pro?
I have about 10 minutes of footage which includes what is supposed to be a 100% white background (no gradients).
The person who shot the footage apparently used 2 overlapping sheets of white background paper.
This left a horizontal line across the background.
It's really faint, but still noticeable.
Is there a relatively easy way to get rid of this without having to deal with it on a frame by frame basis?
(Note: to make matters worse, sometimes — though rarely — the line is directly behind the subject — a product being unboxed)

For the parts you have nothing in the way I would duplicate the clip above, them mask out a part without the seam and move this over the seam.
When the product come over the seam I don’t see another solution then to track the mask frame by frame.


text:
iMovie workflow for creating different versions or snapshots?
While using iMovie, I want to easily create snapshots of my project so that I can easily go back in time and grab things that I need.
For example, if I'm making large scale changes, and I accidentally messed up a clip or a nice transition, I want to be able to go back in time to grab the version of the clip before it was messed up.
In its default state, iMovie has you working on one single version of a project, and your only way to go back in time is by using the undo feature. However, this is not preserved between app launches, and probably has a limit.
I know I could copy an entire library, but that would take up a ton of disk space as all the videos would be copied too.

TL;DR

Use separate iMovie Libraries for each video project.
Duplicate projects for each version.

This is the current workflow I've come up with:

Very importantly, create a separate iMovie Library for each of your video projects (not to be confused with a Project in iMovie). This will make versioning and backup much easier. By default, iMovie has you saving everything in one giant Library, making it both hard to find what you need, but also hard to backup or share a specific project.
Create a new Project, and call it master. This will be the only Project you ever edit directly and will always represent the latest changes.
Start editing your Project. Once you get into a state where you want to "save" it as a version, go to Projects, and duplicate master. Rename it to v0.1 and optionally add a description. E.g. v0.1 - initial transitions done, still missing credits.
Continue working on master and creating more versions as you go along. E.g. v0.2 - before making large scale changes to the contrast of all the clips.
Once you're at a point where you want to share your video (e.g. via uploading to YouTube), create a major version number (E.g. v1.0). This will make it really easy to come back to the "YouTube" edit of your video, for example.
If you continue making changes, continue using the same versioning scheme to make v1.1 - Credits fixed, for example.

By duplicating Projects within the same Library, you save a ton of disk space since each project copy is lightweight and doesn't copy over all the video files.

I'm not allowed to vote, but I had to say how happy I am to have run into this workflow. Turned out perfect for my project and I will use it from now on. Many thanks!

Can you add something about how you use "Events"? Most info discusses Projects and Events, where you discuss Libraries and Projects. How do Events fit into your workflow?


text:
Film DCI4k or UHD for exporting DCI-Scope but watching on UHD screen
Most of my films are 21:9 in DCI-Scope:
4096x1716p
I can record inside my camera with UHD or DCI 4k, and I'm not sure what is better for playback quality?
Shooting in UHD and cropping to about 3840x1608 so that on a UHD screen, each pixel can be mapped to one real pixel.
Or shooting DCI4k and cropping it to DCI4k Scope. Which means there isn't one pixel for each real pixel on the screen.
Or to better ask:
Does it improve quality when the screen has the exact same resolution as the video?

I researched a bit more on my own and it looks like there is a diffrence but no big one.
While a native image will look better, the image quality isn't much diffrent when "downscaling" to UHD.
It might be noticable on a high quality projector screen, but on desktop and espacially on mobile screens it shouldn't be a problem.


text:
How to give puzzle like effect to the image inside the video using FFMEPG
I want to add an image want to animate an image just like this: https://streamable.com/qvqed.
Input video is this: https://streamable.com/y68e0
How would I achieve this?

This will be very cumbersome to carry out. Each unique anim will have to be manually constructed. Consider using the remap filter.

@Gyan thanks I will take a look over it. If any question I will ask again :)


text:
ffmpeg - switch between two streams from /dev/video* and record to disk
I'm trying to capture two webcams on /dev/video0 and /dev/video1 and write the live feed to disk. I'd like to be able to switch between the two sources every 10 seconds so the resulting video on disk shows only one video stream at a time for 10 seconds and then the other. I hope I'm clear enough :/
I played around with filter_complex without understanding much, but could only get the stream to show video0 for 10 seconds and from then on video1 - I don't know, how to switch back. Something like a command to loop the filter_complex commands...

Same resolution?

Yes, same FPS/Resolution

"I don't know, how to switch back" - as a workaround you may add video2 from the same file as video0.

@Qwertiy I may have been imprecise - no native english speaker here... I'd like to capture from /dev/video0 and /dev/video1 alternating into the same target file (out.mp4)
That means: take the stream from video0 for 10sec and write to out.mp4 - take the stream from video1 for 10sec and continue writing to out.mp4 - and start over again. Without Interruption.


text:
Video quality degrades when uploading to YouTube with variable frame rate
So I use OBS (latest ver) to record my gameplay on Windows 10.
OBS settings are:

recording format: MP4
Recording quality: indistinguishable quality, large file size
Encoder: Software (x264 low CPU usage preset, increases file size)
Downscale filter: Lanczos (sharpened scaling, 32 samples)
FPS value for recording: 60
Base and output resolution are both the same, 1080P and my monitor is
1080p as well as my in-game resolution.

So when i'm recording from a less demanding games like the new Resident Evil 2 (RE2) the video file looks perfect, both on my computer (using VLC) and on YouTube they look great. I run the game on fixed 60 FPS using V-sync and ultra graphic settings.
the videos i'm talking about:

But, when I record from a more demanding game like Assassin's Creed Odyssey, I can't get a fixed 60 FPS, average is 45 FPS and it varies between 32 to 60 FPS.
after i finish recording i play the video file on VLC and it looks great, just like my gameplay, but when I upload it to YouTube, it looks awful, blurry and so much noise in it.

My YouTube channel doesn't have so much subscribers (almost 200) so YouTube doesn't use VP9 to convert my videos, it only uses x264, I don't know it's relatable though.
so my question is, where is the problem exactly? is it YouTube's fault converting my videos so poorly? because they look fine on my computer when i play them.
Or
is it my fault and i'm doing something wrong in the settings? if so what should i change?
PS:
I've tried setting the recording FPS in OBS to 30 FPS but the gameplay looked so slow on YouTube and on my PC.

You need to tell us what the actual framerate of the video you are uploading is. Setting it to record at 30 and expecting it to BE 30...isn't accurate. Check via vlc player if you aren't sure how to use ffprobe. It Shouldn't matter what framerate you upload to youtube, so its likely something else causing the problem.

Not sure why YouTube would be degrading the video quality because of the lower framerate. Perhaps, after recording at the lower framerate, re-encode the videos using 60fps before uploading. It'll make the file bigger without the actual benefit of the higher framerate (just creates duplicate frames), but maybe worth it if it prevents video quality from degrading.
Edit: OBS uses FFmpeg, & FFmpeg has some recommended settings specific for YouTube. If you are using the same settings for both videos, this is probably irrelevant.


text:
GUI equivalent for ffmpeg eq filter parameters
I was wanting to know if anyone is aware of a GUI tool that mimics or is similar to the eq video filter parameters in ffmpeg.  The eq filter is used to set brightness, contrast, saturation, gamma, etc.
I have a general sense of the parameters and how to control them at the command line...however, sometimes having a GUI-equivalent for such a tool can more easily/quickly allow for fine tuning or adjustments to the 8+ "knobs and switches" for ffmpeg's eq video filter.
I did find a plugin that's installed as part of Avidemux that's pretty close to ffmpeg's eq filter -- in Avidemux it's called MPlayer eq2 --  but the results displayed in the preview window in Avidemux don't match the results I get when I transfer the syntax over to ffmpeg.
Does anyone have any pointers or ideas as to how to more easily manage changing the various eq parameters in ffmpeg?
Thanks!

Heh. ffmpeg's eq is a port of mplayer's eq2. I suspect the differences are due to interpretation of the color properties.

Yeah, I figured it was a difference in how they were implemented.  I didn't know if there was some type of ratio between min/max/default values of each of the parameters between ffmpeg's vs. Avidemux's implementation of that filter.
...thought about creating some formulas in Excel to do the ratio calculations and then build the eq expression that I would paste in for the ffmpeg command.  Sounds like a bunch of hoop jumping though.  I really would just like to have a GUI where I could toggle options at will and quickly preview.


text:
Changing duration of multiple still frames at once (stopmotion animation)
I want to make video from multiple still photos (some kind of slideshow). When I drag&drop photos from media pool, they appear on timeline, but last too long. When I select all frames, press right mouse button and choose "change clip duration" I can set some value. Unfortunately, they are changing duration but stay at previous position leaving some gaps:

Are there any other ways to set duration of all frames to the same, fixed value (0.5 second for example), and at the same time keep them all together?

Just a note...in Resolve 15 the path is... Preferences > User > Editing > Standard still duration setting

You can use Edit > Delete Gaps
This will remove all gaps on all tracks. To exclude a particular track, you can lock the track before you Delete Gaps.
You can also change the default Image/Still duration before the import in the application Preferences > User  > General > Standard still duration setting

thanks! I will try it out today and eventually mark this as best answer


text:
FFMPEG - How can I add black bars to top and bottom of my video?
I have about 100 videos. I would like to add a 30 pixel horizontal black bar to the top and bottom of each video without ruining the dimenions(so even if they go over the video). How can I achieve this? Also what's the command to have it run on every video in the folder without doing it for each one? I'm a complete beginner and I'm lost. Any help would be really appreciated!

https://video.stackexchange.com/q/12105/21971

OS - Windows, macOS?

Adding Bars
You can do it with a combination of the crop & pad video filters:
-filter:v crop="in_w:in_h-60:0:30",pad="in_w:in_h+60:0:-30"

Both filters use the same format: width:height:x-offset:y-offset
In the crop filter, you want width to be same as the video's input width (you can use the variable in_w). You want to crop 60 pixels (30*2) from the input height (in_h-60). X offset stays at zero so nothing is changed horizontally. And set the Y offset to 30 so that 30 pixels are cropped from the top & bottom each. Otherwise, it will just crop 60 pixels from the bottom.
In the pad filter, the in_w & in_h variables will be whatever is output from the crop filter (you can just replace these with the actual video dimensions if you prefer). Use in_w again to preserve horizontal dimension. Add 60 black pixels back to the vertial dimension (in_h+60). Leave the X offset at 0 & set Y offset to -30 so pixels are added at top & bottom. Otherwise, it will just add 60 pixels to bottom.
The other option, as I think @Quertiy was pointing out, is to create a PNG image the same dimensions as your video with black bars at the top & bottom, & transparent in the middle, then overlay it onto the image:
ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -i overlay.png -filter_complex "overlay" -c:v libx264 "out.mp4"

It may be wise to list the streams in the filter arguments: -filter_complex "[0:0][1:0]overlay"

Multiple Files
If you were using a Unix shell (I believe this is what MacOS uses), you could use a for loop to convert all videos in a directory:
for V in *; do ffmpeg -i "$V" -c:v libx264 -filter:v crop="in_w:in_h-60:0:30",pad="in_w:in_h+60:0:-30" "padded-$V"; done

But I'm not sure what the equivalent is using the Windows command prompt.
Edit: Windows command prompt has a for loop as well. So it should be something like:
for %V in (*) do ffmpeg -i "%V" -c:v libx264 -filter:v crop="in_w:in_h-60:0:30",pad="in_w:in_h+60:0:-30" "padded-%V"

But, I haven't tested it.
Note: Use %%V within batch files, %V if using the command prompt directly.
Edit: According to this article, you should be able to do it in Windows PowerShell like this:
foreach ($V in Get-ChildItem .\) {ffmpeg -i "$V" -c:v libx264 -filter:v crop="in_w:in_h-60:0:30",pad="in_w:in_h+60:0:-30" "padded-$V"}

Again, I haven't fully tested it.

Somewhat faster would be to apply drawbox twice. drawbox=iw:30:0:0:t=fill,drawbox=iw:30:0:ih-30:t=fill

This really helped blacking out subtitles when I needed to re-sub. in another language.


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Workflow of editing in Premiere and Color Grading in Davinci
I am new to color grading in Davinci Resolve (Studio) and am not sure about how the workflow should go.
As far as I understand there are three options:

Color Correct all Clips and render in losless codec (More work as unused clips get processed too)
Edit the film, than only grade used clips and relink them in premiere (Not so nice as you can't see the hole think while grading)
Somehow import the Premiere Project to Davinci with all cuts

I am not sure how the third one would work, espacially while using many Nested sequences.
So what is the best/official way to do this?
Thanks!

There rarely is one best or official workflow. Every team and even every project is different. Tools get used in different ways. You will need to experiment and find what works for you.

@MichaelLiebman Sure I know, but I guess there are allready ways that others know which won't work/are bad. So I wanted to get some suggestions.

What works for me is the following:

Sync audio in PluralEyes and export to Premiere.
Edit in Premiere before color correction or grading. Yeah, log footage looks crap, but you should be able to edit just fine. Apply a LUT temporarily if you absolutely can't stand it.
Export to FCPro XML from Premiere and import into DaVinci.
Color correct in DaVinci
Color grade and add any other color effects
Correct audio in DaVinci using Fairlight (yum!)
Export

That's what works for me. YMMV and others may have a totally different flow. But this lets me use PluralEyes which does way better and more complex syncing based on audio than DaVinci or Premiere. It also gives me my hotkeys for editing in Premiere and the best color grader in the biz which is DaVinci along with Fairlight which is great for audio.

Thank you, sounds good. How far can FCPro XML go? I use quite a lot of nested sequences, After Effect Timelines directly in Premiere Pro and all Effects, can Davinci recreate all of this accuratly?

I noticed my transitions disappeared when exporting from Premiere. So I literally just user it for cutting. I wouldn't rely heavily or assuming anything other than tracks, cuts and synchronization. Other than that, all bets are off as far as I'm concerned. Perhaps others have had more luck.

Just want to add: The main reason I'm still using Premiere for editing is the shortcut keys I'm used to and it's a good workflow from PluralEyes to Premiere to DaVinci. DaVinci is horrible at multi-cam audio sync and going from PluralEyes direct to DaVinci is painful. Going via Premiere is way easier and more reliable I've found.

Thank you, hmm. I really need deeper editing in Premiere Pro (I don't want to switch to Davinci as I have a ton of shortcuts/scripts for Premiere and I need to use team projects.) So I guess your workflow won't be usable for me. Thank you still.


text:
FFmpeg change overlay color (with audiovisualiser)
There is a padding (default black) under the audio visualiser in the script below ,how could one change the color of this padding ?
I tried adding option "overlay :colors= Blue" but received an error= "Option 'colors' not found"

fmpeg -y -i music.mp3 -loop 1 -i whiteImage.jpg -filter_complex "[0:a]showwaves=s=1280x175:colors=Red:mode=p2p,format=yuv420p[v];[1:v][v]overlay=0:200[outv]" -map "[outv]" -pix_fmt yuv420p -map 0:a -c:v libx264 -c:a copy -shortest output_bg.mp4

Use
ffmpeg -y -i music.mp3 -loop 1 -i image -filter_complex "[0:a]showwaves=s=1280x175:colors=Red:mode=p2p,format=yuva420p,split=2[w][b];[b]format=yuv420p,drawbox=c=blue:t=fill[b];[b][w]overlay[wv];[1:v][wv]overlay=0:200:shortest=1[outv]" -map "[outv]" -pix_fmt yuv420p -map 0:a -c:v libx264 -c:a copy output_bg.mp4
The showwaves will make the background transparent if the filter can output to a frame format with alpha. yuv420p does not have alpha, so the value of the format filter should be changed to a format that does, like yuva420p. Then this picture is cloned; one copy is made opaque and has a color drawn on it. The other copy with the transparent BG is overlaid on top. Finally, this result is overlaid on the image.
It's better to limit the video stream within the overlay filter, if possible. So, -shortest removed.

thanks for the script but  running it, gives the following error :-Stream specifier 'v' in filtergraph description [0:a]showwaves=s=1280x175:colors=Red:mode=p2p,format=yuva420p,split=2[w][b];[b]format=yuv420p,drawbox=c=blue:t=fill[b];[b][v]overlay[wv];[1:v][wv]overlay=0:200:shortest=1[outv] matches no streams.


text:
How to extract the "real frames" without rely on fps?
I noticed if I extract frames with this command:
ffmpeg -i sample_nosound.mp4 $filename%03d.jpg

It will extract depends on fps by default. ffmpeg -i shows this video has 6 fps, so it extracted 1630 jpg frame files, which 1630/6 = 271.6 seconds equivalent to the 4:32 total video duration.
But 1630 jpg frames total size is 13 MB:
$ du -h extracted_jpg_folder
13M      extracted_jpg_folder

, while the file size of the mp4 is 1.8 MB, far  lower than the total frames size:
$ ls -la sample_nosound.mp4
-rw-rw-r-- 1 xiaobai xiaobai 1814889 Feb  13 15:42 'sample_nosound.mp4'

That means ffmpeg extract frames by referring fps info.
Therefore my question is, how to make ffmpeg extract frames by "real frames" without rely on fps ?
I expect I can get total frames size which almost equivalent with the mp4 files size.
I don't expect exact match file size, since mp4 may contains some metadata.

Video in MP4 typically uses interframe compression, so your expectation is mistaken.

You don't quite understand how this works.
h.264 doesn't save single images, but much rather one image, than f.e. 4 estimations what should come after.
For example:
Imagine a ball rolling from left to right, you could noe either store 30 frames of the ball rolling, or you store 1 frame of the ball in the beginning and one in the end, and when you play the video, just take the first image, and copy the ball a bit to the right.
This means, that I Frame compression can be smaller, than single frames.

Yes, now I understand why download some streaming in half way is not possible to recover without original image.

@林果皞 Well; if I understand you correctly, Interframes aren't the problem with this. You don't just have one "Main" frame and the rest are generated. It's more like One "Mainframe" and then 4 generated ones. Not being able to download just the half is another problem

I think I already understand with Intra-frames info in this answer https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/500672/64403 ,  but I get confuse after read your comment about "Mainframe" and "Main" frame.

"Mainframe" and "Main" Frame are the same, my bad.


text:
Follow focus on cinema camera?
I would like to purchase a Blackmagic camera but it doesn't have any follow focus system. When searching further, I noticed that many professional cinema cameras doesn't have an integrated follow focus system (Arri, Red...), while a basic Sony A7sii does have one.
I would like to know please how do these cameras work. I saw that they are used with a separate follow focus system (be it wired or wireless) but technically when an object is moving, should the operator grope and try to match the focus on the moving object or is there any automatic recognition system ?
Thanks,
Cheers

Follow focus usually means a manual focussing rig designed to be ergonomic for the operator. You're mixing it up with "auto focus".

On professio al sets with a camera crew, there is an extra person which pulls the focus.
We don't really use automatic focus.
This needs some training, but it's not so hard to pull off.
Normally, you attach 15mm rods to the camera body, on which you then mount the FF system, "wired" systems start at around 20$, useable ones at around 100$.
Wireless you could take a Tilta Nucleus Nano for 230$

Thanks for you answer. And is it precise when done manually ?

Well, this depends on you. You can get really accurate focus with it, but this needs training. You will get the best focus, when you have a dedicated focus puller.

For documentary work, where you don't get multiple takes, or the ability to measure focus before the shot, a high definition external monitor with focus peaking is a very useful piece of kit. Focus peaking highlights areas that are in focus with a coloured outline.

The feature you are describing on your a7 is "Auto Focus" the problem with auto-focus is that focus is actually a relatively hard problem to solve.  An automated system has to figure out what you want to focus on and then has to achieve focus on it.  There are two major problems with this.
First, for video, having a computer guess at what you want to be focused on is very dangerous.  Having things very mildly out of focus is much less distracting than having the focus jump around because the computer gets confused about what it should be focusing on.  Auto focus is generally just as likely to ruin a video shot as it is to save it.
Second, there are two main ways to handle auto focus.  The first is contrast based detection, which doesn't require altering the sensor, but requires going past the point of focus and then returning after things start being less sharp rather than more sharp.  This results in the focus "breathing" which is, again, very distracting.  The other option is phase detect auto-focus.  This can tell if something is in focus or not, but requires that the focus point be on a particular pixel which has to be altered to be able to both capture the visual information as well as capture phase information to determine if things are in focus.  This complicates the sensor and means there is less room for light gathering, so these hybrid sensors aren't really super desirable due to their limited areas of being able to focus and cost to the consistency of the sensor.
For these reasons, professional camera bodies don't generally have auto-focus while shooting.  Many of the Black Magic cameras actually do have Auto-focus, but it's contrast based and intended to be used before you begin shooting, not while the shot is going.
That doesn't mean these cameras don't give you tools to help with focusing.  The main aid they give is a feature called "focus peaking".  Focus peaking analyses the image and looks for the areas of the image that are the sharpest.  It then highlights the edged detected for the top x% of sharpest lines and/or points in the image.  This is typically configurable on better camera bodies.  This visual information lets the operator know where the focal plain in the image is and easily make manual adjustments on the fly without overshooting.
It's possible to do this as a single camera operator with a little bit of practice, even for relatively complicated shots, but on higher end productions, 2-3 people actually operate the camera to simplify things.  One person would be the "follow focus" operator.  A follow focus is simply a system of gears that rig the focus ring of the lens to a dial that can be controlled by another operator.  This ring can normally be marked with a dry erase marker to label what spots they need to hit and they'll also typically have a monitor with focus peaking to allow them to see what they are doing.  This operator can then remotely adjust focus for the camera without taking the main camera operator's attention away from framing and executing the shot itself.
Sometimes these follow focus controls may actually be used by a single camera operator as well since they can pivot the orientation of the ring to be more logically following in and out and to give a finer grained control over the focus ring by not gearing 1:1.

Follow Focus is used in professional Cinematography.
There is a specific role created for the purpose of getting the right focus called "Focus Puller" - 1 person that controls the follow focus.
How accurate Your focus is mostly depends on the brightness of Your surroundings. While shooting on F2.8 You have really low depth of field (so it is hard to pull the focus).
Then You can sacrifice some of that light hitting the sensor and go into F4.0 or higher but then there is the risk that if You don't have enough light and Your scene is dark.
Most of the cameras have a marker on the body stating where the sensor is placed and in professional environement it is used to measure the distance between sensor and the object being filmed. Then focus puller can mark the focus whell or try hitting it by any other mark that might be used for that.
But to directly answer the question - There is a system that is allowing You to mimick follow focus, it is called Auto Focus. But then You need to use it consciously. If there is no auto focus allowed (either body or lens) then You're left with manual or wireless follow focus servo systems.
I think it also depends heavily on the sensor being used but that is for another thread.


text:
Get Lumetri Settings from 3D LUT
I have a few LUT's which I quite like, but a few settings aren't quite what I would like.
I know, that I could simply adjust those settings within the Lumetri Panel, but I would prefere to get the "raw" settings with which the LUTs where created.
Is there a way to get this done in Premiere Pro?

I know there is at least one program that can create LUTs. I can't recommend any of them personally but have a search for 'lut creator' and see how you go.

@stib Wrong way, I dont want to create a LIT from the settings, but  Settings from the LIT


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iPhone X or Canon 77D - which will produce better quality?
I own a Canon 77D DSLR and am just getting started with filmmaking. I have a variable ND filter etc. I wonder if this DSLR would produce better quality videos than my iPhone X (with FiLMiC pro)?
I know that 77D doesn't shoot in 4K whereas iPhone X does. But what about the quality of 1080p at 24fps?
iPhone X also seems to have some optical image stabilization. Is it better than Canon's electronical stabilizer for videos in Digic 7 chip?
I don't know much about codecs and stuff hence why I ask here.

Well, this hardly depends on what you want to do and need.
If you simply want to create cinematic images, 77D will be a lot better because of the bigger sensor.
If you need highly technical and sharp images, like I would expect it from a tech YT channel, I would take the iPhone X.
In the end, it matters more how you handle the camera, than what it can.
Espacially lighting will make a huge difference on both cameras.
So facts are, iPhone X video will look cleaner, but 77D will be more easily to achieve cinematic footage and give character to the image

Thanks! From what I already observed: the iPhone X footage looks terrible in low light whereas from a 77D looks relatively good. But I guess you can’t cheat physics - sensor size matters a lot in low light.

I don't have practical test with the 77D, but that may be very true. A bigger sensor generally means better night capabilitys, but there are some other factors as well.