text:
sites for Video Background Loops?
What some sites for Video Background Loops? I wonder if any know where I am get vj loop?
Thank you

Creative Commons licenses permit liberal media distribution, redistribution, and re-mixing.  I did a very simple Google search and immediately found this source of CC-licensed VJ loops.

There are also many sites with Video Background Loops.
Use any search engine to find them. A good site to Video Loops is here: Video Loops


text:
After Effects: How to create a sliding waveform
I was wondering how does one create a sliding waveform in After Effects? I know how to do a static one (since there is a simple effect for it) but I have no idea how to do a progressing one that slides from one side of the screen to the other one for as long as the audiotrack lasts.
Thanks in advance!

related: http://video.stackexchange.com/questions/9644/how-do-i-turn-audio-into-video-that-is-show-the-waveforms-in-a-video

Simple. Get the waveform of your audio file (You could screenshot the audio file in a sound editor to do this).
Animate it moving sideways.
Less simple: Bring the audio into your comp. Right click the audio layer and chose Animation Assistant>Convert audio to keyframes

Now use the keyframes to drive the scale, rotation, position etc of some elements of your comp. E.G. you could add a solid and apply this to the scale property:
[value[0], value[1]*thisComp.layer("Audio Amplitude").effect("Both Channels")("Slider")]

That will multiply the vertical scale of the solid by the amplitude of the audio (both channels).
If you make an array of layers like the one above you can offset the time at which they read the audio level. You can use the valueAtTime() function to use each solid layer's index (the layer number) to add a two frame delay to each successive layer like this (two or more frames looks better than one frame, because a one-frame delay makes it look like you used method 1):
[value[0], value[1]*thisComp.layer("Audio Amplitude").effect("Both Channels")("Slider").valueAtTime(time + index*thisComp.frameDuration)]

Pro tip: easily make a horizontal array of your solid layers by using this on the position property:
  [index*width*1.2 - width/2, thisComp.height/2]
  that will line up the layers horizontally with a small gap between each one. Remove the *1.2 bit to align them next to each other. Apply that expression to one layer and just keep duplicating till you've filled your screen.

Here's an example which I've pre-comped with an adjustment layer over the top to give graduated colour to the bars:

also, turn on motion blur, it'll look a lot betterer.

But wont I need tons of layers then?
Anyways, cool idea. Thank you! :)

Yes,  (or you could use a shape layer with lots of shapes) . But by using the expressions the layers can be generated by duplicating the first layer repeatedly.

The Trapcode Sound Keys plugin can do this quickly and easily.
http://www.redgiant.com/products/trapcode-sound-keys/

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Video overlay - how is this effect created?
I came accross this image - and was wondering how to recreate it in after effects?
https://www.truedigital.co.uk/assets/video/us-hero.mp4

I was able to produce it by doing the following:

Convert the video to monochrome by turning the saturation down
Apply Levels and bring the output black point up to around 30%
Put an orange color solid over it and set the opacity to 50%
Set the blend mode to "Normal," "Overlay," or "Hard Light"

You can experiment with the black point and blend modes to get the look just right for your footage.

There are many ways to do this;
Three built in effects that do it for you, each with differing levels of control...

CC Toner
Tritone
Tint

just colour pick the shades of orange you want.

Just looks like a solid color layer on top with some transparency.

Yes, that I figured - but what "kind" of overlay is used to produce these kinds of color schemes?

I just see the hue switched off. Try Color Correction -> Black & White effect

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


text:
Quality difference between source and timeline render
I'm testing some high quality footage from Arri (https://www.arri.com/EN/camera/alexa/learn/alexa_sample_footage/) and I've noticed that PP when rendering the timeline lowers the quality considerably.
If you reference the below image, I have only added a title only and the timeline render quality in PP is awful.
Both my playback and pause resolution is full.
If I remove the title from the timeline the full quality is restored. This issue will occur with any PP effect. If I don't render the timeline, the program sequence runs at full quality.
The final render out is fine, but I want to work with the footage in high quality as my machine is more than capable. What am I missing here?
CPU: i7 4770K @ 4.3
MEM: 32GB
GPU: GTX970
SSD Disks

after posting this I randomly stumbled upon a setting in Preferences.
Preferences -> Memory
Optimize rendering for performance
Changed to "Memory"
Looks fine now.

Please also mark this question as solved ;)

Note that the timeline render isn't necessarily the final result. How you set the export settings determines the quality of the final output.


text:
Material to record though so camera isn't visible?
I am building an Arduino (https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardUno) device that will record video based on a motion sensors, as well as other data in the environment. The thing is, I need to record from within a box to the outside, but the camera should not be visible. Any ideas or advice on how and what to use?

If the camera can see you, you can see the camera (except possibly through a half-silvered mirror). All you can do is disguise it, for example "teddy-bear cams". How big is the lens opening? What are the surroundings? How is the scene lit? More details will help.

If quality of video is not so important to you, then you can use effect, which is used on public transport windows:

It is when you use lot of dots on the glass. From the outside it looks like semitransparent image. But from inside it will look like that:

With correct focus dots will be less visible on video.
And second option is to use half-silvered mirror.

Traffic cameras and security cameras shoot through a dark glass, so you could use something like that.
I'm sure you've seen those black domes in stores - it's called a Pan/Tilt/Zoom (PTZ) dome.  You might look in the area of security camera accessories.


text:
Is ffmpeg the solution to automate video building from multiple files
Need some help automating video & audio stitching and could use some help/direction.
Let's say I have the following assets:
Video 1
Video 2
Video 3
Music 1
And I want to build a few variations of the above assets like:
Variation #1
Video 1 -> Video 3
<----Music 1----->
Variation #2
Video 3 -> Video 1
<----Music 1----->
Note Music would need to be trimmed based on the length of the videos combined.

Is it possible to map a web form to the assets listed above (located on a local server) and have the web form ultimately build the order of the video and render out to the local server?
If possible, would FFmpeg or Animoto API (or another) be the right choice?
What kind of time/resources would it take to build something like this?

You can do this with ffmpeg using either the concat filter or the concat demuxer. Which one to use depends whether or not your inputs have the same parameters or not. If they do not, you may have to perform additional filtering to make everything suitable to be concatenated properly.
Example: concat filter
For inputs that vary in frame rate, width, and height:
ffmpeg -i video0 -i video1 -i video2 -i music -filter_complex \
"[0:v]fps=25,scale=1280x720,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[v0]; \
"[1:v]fps=25,scale=1280x720,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[v1]; \
"[2:v]fps=25,scale=1280x720,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[v2]; \
"[v0][v1][v2]concat=n=3:v=1:a=0,format=yuv420p[v]" \
-map "[v]" -map 3:a -shortest output

If outputting mp4 consider adding -movflags +faststart as an output option if your viewers will watch via progressive download.
Example: concat demuxer
If all of your inputs are similar then first make a list file named input.txt:
file "/path/to/video0"
file "/path/to/video1"
file "/path/to/video2"

Then run ffmpeg:
ffmpeg -f concat -i input.txt -i music -shortest output

Add -codec copy if you want to stream copy instead of re-encode. This is not possible with the concat filter because filtering requires re-encoding.
Your questions

Is it possible to map a web form to the assets listed above (located on a local server) and have the web form ultimately build the order of the video and render out to the local server?

Yes. As long as your protocol is supported by ffmpeg. See ffmpeg -protocols for a list supported by your build.

If possible, would FFmpeg or Animoto API (or another) be the right choice?

It is possible with ffmpeg, but I've never used Animoto API so I can't comment on that.

What kind of time/resources would it take to build something like this?

That's not really possible to answer. You provided very little info and it depends on the skill of whoever is building it.
Also see

FFmpeg Wiki: Concatenate


text:
Video transformation
Is it possible to use a low resolution camera with low mega pixels and make it look like the video was shoot with a camera with high mega pixel (120 MP to say) after using adobe after effects?

If you're asking whether you can use AE to increase the actual or apparent resolution of a low-res source, the answer is no. You can't create resolution where none exists. If you could, no one would ever spend money on hi-res cameras.
What you can do is 'sharpen' an image, which increases the contrast of edge detail and may increase apparent resolution a little bit. But this doesn't increase actual resolution; it actually reduces it slightly.


text:
Good app / process for organizing video snapshots into a storyboard?
I have many hours of footage from a friend's wedding I want to set to a music video.  I'm using Adobe Premiere.  I already have the main story arch, and now I want to fine-tune the sequence of shots per scene/act.
I think what'd work best for me is to grab snapshots of the candidate clips and lay them out in an app that lets me sort and organize. After that, I want to run through the storyboard along with the song to see how well it fits.
Does someone know a good process or app for doing this?  Ideally, I want to replicate the process of using storyboard index cards and organizing them manually.  I imagine it's easier to do this all in software since the source material is all digital.  Free is preferred but I'll consider paying for something nice.
Left to my own devices I'll probably pull screen caps using Premiere or VLC and sort them manually in Windows Explorer.

I know some editors that do this process in an analogue fashion and print out representative frames from the clips and put them on a magnetic board to be able to move them around.
There is no real way to automate the process of picture grabbing since you need a very specific frame which makes you remember immediately which clip it represents and that can only be chosen manually.

I agree that you can't entirely automate the frame grabs, but it'd still be useful to have a batch process that lets you grab the Nth frame of each clip for multiple clips.  Some of those frames will be good enough to represent the clip and the rest can be pulled manually.

This probably does what you need: https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Create%20a%20thumbnail%20image%20every%20X%20seconds%20of%20the%20video

I ended up using Trello.  It was nice in that I can lay out shots scene by scene, with each scene as a list.  Dragging and dropping individual frames (as png's or jpegs) for card cover images was super handy, as was being able to move around and organize the cards later on.
Being able to write longer descriptions and comment on each card allowed me to document why I wanted to use a shot, or decided against it.


text:
Real time ffmpeg / x264 encoder behavior when input resolution suddenly changes
I want to take a live HD-SDI signal being captured by a capture card and encode it in real time to X.264.
What happens when the input resolution suddenly changes? eg, from HD SDI 1080/50i to HD SDI 720/59p, etc.
Does the encoder handle that gracefully? Or would there be some artifacts/disturbance in the output? (or worse?)

Haven't come across that scenario but you could apply a scale, deinterlace and fps filter so that libx264 is processing frames with the same properties.

Thanks for the comment.  I don't think that will work well. The encoded content written to disk must later be played back out an HD-SDI card at the original resolution and frame rate (of course at a lower quality). Modifying the frame rate on encode will introduce some unacceptable artifacts.


text:
How Do I create this liquid like animation?
I just wondered what Plugins are neceassary to create such a liquid looking effect like in this video:
https://vimeo.com/136832449
Screenshot:

Those paint splats are often done with stock footage or filmed footage. Get a black or green surface, throw some paint at it and film it. Bring it in to AE and extract the alpha from the luma or with chroma-key and then re-colour the paint however you like using your colour correction tools of choice.
To make liquid effects in AE without footage, here's the technique I've been using since forever. I worked it out myself years ago, but so did a lot of other people, so I won't claim to have invented it
Take your source layer, eg. text, footage whatever. Apply the turbulent displace filter to it, starting with 0% strength and ramping up. Muck around with the settings and animate the evolution setting until it looks like you want it. Then apply a blur, again, starting at 0 then ramping up. Then use the extract filter to harden the edges of the blurred outlines. Lastly use the fill filter to fill in the layer with a solid colour. The effect will be something dissolving into blobs of liquid. Works best with line art and text, or high contrast footage.

Nice Effect, but I don't think that its the effect used in here

Looks like no fancy plug-ins or effects are used. It is simply a case of keyframming shape paths/masks.
(thats how the people who make the stock footage do it)


text:
What is a simple way to transfer HI-8 tapes to my computer?
A long time ago I had a HI-8 camera. Now I would like to create home movies I can share digitally. Does anyone know a simple an hopefully inexpensive way to transfer these tapes to my computer?

"HI-8" is an analog format. You will need a hi-8 player or camera with outputs and an analog to digital converter. Consumer grade devices are typically finicky -you get what you pay for. I've used several of the 60-$80 level in the past and had various issues. Such as: not detecting the source, poorly written drivers, very buggy software, low quality capture.
Here's a list of comon some common devices to help your research:
http://vhs-to-dvd-converters-review.toptenreviews.com/
Mostly these come with a software to allow capture and create a digital file. Some also allow you to burn to a DVD / blu-ray.
A better quality box might be something like this (I haven't tried this unit):
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/349146-REG/Grass_Valley_602029_ADVC_110_Bidirectional_Media_Converter.html
You will need to get software sperately. Most editing software Premiere Pro, etc. Allows you do capture from a source. You will need to have some knowledge of what codec / wrappers, video aspect; to get a good result.

The OP will also need an Hi8 player. An alternative is to find a company in the neighborhood that offers such digitization service.

fair enough, edited the answer


text:
How can I generate a full waveform from my audio file in After Effects?
There is an effect in After Effects which generates audio waves and spectrums from audio tracks. What I get is the form for a given second.
How can I get the full waveform on a single frame ?

Could you use another audio editing program and get a screenshot?

ffmpeg can do this, but the area under the wave is solid color. Will that do?

It depends what you mean by the full waveform on a single frame.
If you want to view the entire duration of your audio file on screen in a single frame, you can do this, assuming your audio file is shorter than 30 seconds:

Add the audio file to a comp.
Apply the Audio Waveform effect to a solid in a comp.
In the audio waveform effects settings, set the audio layer to your audio track.
Set the Displayed Samples setting to the sample rate of your audio file (eg 44100).
Set the Audio Duration to the duration of your audio file in milliseconds (1000 per second of audio).
Set the Thickness of your waveform to 1, to show more detail.

You should end up with something like this:

Which looks pretty similar to the waveform as seen in Adobe Audition:


text:
I want to insert my photo as background in my video which has white background
I just recorded a video of myself talking with background as white screen.Now i want to add my photo in that video, so that the final output should be like myself talking in a video with my photo in the background, replacing my previous white background

To replace a white background with an image, you need to use a Luma Key.  A Luma Key is like a Chroma Key, except that instead of using a color value (such as green or blue, usually qualified also by a certain level of luma), you will use only a luma value (such as anything brighter than 200 IRE).
Most NLE software have both compositing and keying functionality.  But now that you know what the effect is called, you can research how to access that functionality in the software you are using (or will use).

Thank you for this... Do you think it is doable in iMovie? I have not found it...

This might be too late, but do try out Adobe Presenter Video Express. There is a feature called - magic green screen, which will make replacing background in videos like you mentioned very simple (it's basically automatic). There is a 30-day free trial, so I guess this should work for you. Disclaimer: I work as a developer for the product.

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


text:
What equipment can I use to record presenter's computer screen?
I need to record a live presentation. I can have a camera to record the slides on projection but usually it comes out washed out. I need a way to have some kind of splitter that goes between the presenter computer and the projection. This was I can record everything I see on the presenter computer screen. Is there a such device?

Can you add whether you are using a mac or PC, what your budget is, where the videos will end up - do you need to record HD or 4K, etc...

Yes. In the old days, we would use a scan converter which took a computer video signal and output it as S-Video.
You have a few options. The least intrusive is to continue to use your existing method of recording the screen, but to request the slides from the presenters.  Then, using the video recording of the screen for timing, you overlay the slides at the appropriate times. If you save the presentation as a website in Microsoft PowerPoint, it will generate a series of JPEG images which are handy for your video editing.
Other methods require you to have access to the computer or the connection to the projector. If you can install software on the presentation computer, you could do a video screen capture.
If you need to capture animations or video, you'll need to capture the actual video signal from the computer. You could send the computer output to a distribution amplifier, and send one of those outputs to a recorder, or you could install an SDI video card, and send the output to a recorder. This is the highest quality solution, but probably exceeds your budget.


text:
Is in-canera noise reduction useful for video?
I've read different opinions online, but they always seem to talk about stills. So, is NR useful for shooting videos? Or does it mess up with the image too much?
I'm shooting on a Panasonic Lumix G7, by the way.

My general rule is to do as little in the camera as possible (exposure, shutter). Leave everything else for post. It's not expected that the camera will have the best available NR or compression etc, and if you do it while recording you can't undo it later.
Of course if you'll never do any post, do what gives you the best result.

There can be an advantage to doing some things in camera, such as white balance and possibly noise correction if it is done before the in-camera  compression

Agreed on WB, as long as it isn't continuous auto white balance. I'm not doctrinaire on the subject, I just like to preserve as many options as reasonably possible.


text:
How does TV video quality remain same on both small and large TVs?
Suppose I have a 32" and a 64" television. Now if I use SD dish connection(like Tata Sky) for both, I will get almost same same video quality on both, right? I was wondering how this is possible. I mean, any shows on TV are aired at 640x480 res(for SD), so why doesn't the video get distorted for a larger TV?

The quality does differ. If both TVs have the same resolution and specs, the image on the bigger one will be more pixelated if viewed from the same distance. The last part of the sentence is the key. You will probably sit farther away from the 64" television. The recommended viewing distance increases proportionally in relation to the screen size (for example, here is a calculator).
If you watch the same source video from the same viewing distance on both TVs, you will notice more pixelation on the bigger one.
You can also notice this effect when looking at any (pixel-based) image on your screen. Open any image on your computer. Looks smooth? Good, then zoom in by a few hundred percent. Now you will notice pixelation to the point where you can make out the individual pixels. Conversely, if you have a pixelated image and zoom out enough, it will look smooth. The same thing happens when you move your chair farther away from/closer to your TV.


text:
Best Streaming Encoding Software to incorporate a message feed
I am trying to stream a weekly boardgaming video podcast. I was hoping to incorporate a message feed to video. I want the people playing the game to be able to show watchers their strategies without revealing it to the other players.
I was thinking some sort of twitter feed that only the users at the table can contribute to or something like that. I have never done anything like this and am new to streaming so any ideas would be helpful.

I  not sure if I understood your question correctly, but CasparCG would be a common solution to overlay graphics (or anything else) to a video feed.
 http://www.casparcg.com
Or, if you want to do this in software, take a look at the liquidsoap library:
http://liquidsoap.fm/doc-svn/video.html


text:
What codec should I edit in on Premiere Pro?
I have a MacBook Air (13-inch, Early 2014) with base configuration. I have a bunch of footage off a Canon 700D which is in a H.264 codec. Now obviously, a MacBook Air does not have an external graphics card, which means that Premiere Pro does not support CUDA which supports faster encoding.
I don't have a plan of changing computers anytime soon, so I was wondering if I should transcode my footage to a different codec so that it encode faster? Is there like a ProRes for Premiere? I will be encoding into H.264 most of the time to upload to YouTube.
Any tips would be great. Thanks for your time.

Premiere Pro supports the use of "proxies" that allow you to edit the video using low resolution files (and thus making edits very fast)
Once you finish, you export using the original file and thus the quality is what you expect.
It is impossible to explain proxies in a single answer. Search the official documentation or one of the many tutorials that exist on this topic.

Ok, thank you for your answer. I'll have a try of that later and let you know.

H.264 (and the soon-to-be popularized H.265) is highly compressed which means your computer needs to work harder to work with it. ProRes, even though the files are larger, will allow for a smoother editing experience.

Thanks for that. Never thought of ProRes! Will give it a shot today.

If by encoding, you simply mean the export process and not the preview performance on the timeline during edit, then it should hardly make a difference. If your computer can play the raw footage in real-time, then the decoding step isn't a limiting factor but applying the effects and encoding to output codec are.


text:
compressed vs uncompressed feasibility question?
I have multiple videos uncompressed. I uploaded them a while ago to vimeo. I lost the original files. However, I found the original files stored in vimeo under the download button below the 1080p version. I realized that the 1080p WAS 100MB in size, whereas the 1080p original was 1.96GB.
In term of storage saving the 100mb IS IDEAL, however will i lose quality? I still cannot grasp the differences btw these two version. if possible would someone explain the differences?
thank you!

As you can imagine, a file that is compressed from 1.96gb to 100mb has lost a lot of information. The question is what you need to do with this film now. If you want to make a version to be shown in cinemas, that's not going to work well since you probably will see compression artifacts etc on a big screen. If you need to create a Sd DVD from it, probably that's fine.

Any video that you upload to sites like Youtube or Vimeo is recompressed in order to standardize the video files they stream to viewers. That version looks to be what you're downloading, but it should be the original upload. Double-check that.
The quality difference of the smaller file, for viewing purposes, should be fine since the compression presets these sites apply is meant to keep quality acceptable while lowering file size. This generally holds unless the footage consists of shots with a lot of fine detail.
The only way to judge whether the smaller file is acceptable is to download and view it.


text:
How to add simple textual animations to videos?
I want to add simple textual animations to videos, just like this one from Business Insider : https://www.facebook.com/228803477461289/videos/231065770568393/
What software do I need in order to realize this ?
I know that After Effects is capable of such things, but I'm looking for (more specialized) software with much less learning curve.

all of those could be achieved directly in your NLE or using simple templates for your NLE, if your using FCPX then Motion would be a good option otherwise AE is going to be the best bet

I'd use Premiere before I used AE, or FCPX.  Take your pick.

Looking at the video, I'd say it's highly likely it was made with Adobe Premiere, Final Cut, or Adobe After Effects.  You could achieve the same thing in FFMPEG, but I doubt that's how they actually made it.

Upvoted, on this website it seems that ffmpeg is the solution to everything. It's true it can do almost anything, but when the OP asks for something easier than After Effects, ffmpeg is not really an answer

thanks for the answer. would it be possible to render the render text and video in html5 canvas, convert the merged video to webm, then use ffmpeg to produce mp4 or another format?

You can achieve that with ffmpeg. Draw text with drawtext command. And draw semitransperent beckground under it with  drawbox. You can see more in that question.
You can add animation of moving text  from side of video with Expression Evaluation.

do you know if it's possible to render the render text and video in html5 canvas, convert the merged video to webm, then use ffmpeg to produce mp4 or another format?

This code works well now. It has several text animations with FFMpeg.
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "[in]drawtext=fontfile=/path/to/font.ttf: text='First Line': fontcolor=red: fontsize=40: x=(w-text_w)/2: y=if(lt(t\,3)\,(-h+((3*h-200)*t/6))\,(h-200)/2):enable='between(t,2.9,50)',drawtext=fontfile=/path/to/font.ttf: text='Second Line': fontcolor=yellow: fontsize=30: x=if(lt(t\,4)\,(-w+((3*w-tw)*t/8))\,(w-tw)/2): y=(h-100)/2:enable='between(t,3.5,50)',drawtext=fontfile=/path/to/font.ttf: text='Third Line': fontcolor=blue: fontsize=50: x=if(lt(t\,5)\,(2*w-((3*w+tw)*t/10))\,(w-tw)/2): y=h/2:enable='between(t,4.5,50)',drawtext=fontfile=/path/to/font.ttf: text='Fourth Line': fontcolor=black: fontsize=20: x=(w-text_w)/2: y=if(lt(t\,6)\,(2*h-((3*h-100)*t/12))\,(h+100)/2):enable='between(t,5.5,50)'[out]" out.mp4


text:
Record desktop at 1080p60 in high quality
I am looking to record my desktop in high quality (not nearly as lossy as H.264).  I have tried OBS @ 200mbps and nVidia Shadowplay @ 50mbps and the text on my desktop is still noticibly blurry when i view the video I just recorded at the native resolution it was recorded at.  OBS is a little bit better than nVidia.

Try lossless encoding with ffmpeg
First, with YUV444P
ffmpeg -f gdigrab -framerate 60 -i desktop -crf 0 -pix_fmt yuv444p -preset ultrafast yuv-cap.mp4

If not clear enough,
ffmpeg -f gdigrab -framerate 60 -i desktop -c:v libx264rgb -crf 0 -pix_fmt bgra -preset ultrafast rgb-cap.mp4

These will likely not be compatible with most video editors, but if the result is satisfactory, then you can transcode at leisure to a compatible codec like PNG in MOV..etc
You can add -draw_mouse 0 before -i desktop to skip recording the cursor.

How would I get this up to 60fps?

Command edited.

Thank you.  Is there a way to only capture one monitor? (i have two 1080p side-by side)

Yeah, two ways. Switch off one of them :) --or-- add -offset_x 1920 -offset_y 0 -video_size 1920x1080 before -i desktop if you want to capture the 2nd monitor which is the right half of your desktop.

I've had a little time to test this out finally.  gdigrab seems to be fairly horrible at capturing high framerate desktop recording.

What I've been using: ffmpeg -f gdigrab -framerate 60 -offset_x 0 -offset_y 0 -video_size 1920x1080 -i desktop -c:v qtrle d:\output-test2.mov

Depends on your system's horsepower. I've multiple comps and the one I'm typing on, it struggles to do 30 smoothly, but it has a (now) low-end GPU. On another one, it does 30 smoothly, but I haven't tried higher rates. Skip the encoding i.e. use -c:v rawvideo and see if that helps.


text:
FFMPEG not writing quicktime "COLR" atom
I am attempting to create Quicktime movs with the "DNXHD" codec with the following ffmpeg command (input part excluded):
-c:v dnxhd -b:v 175M -pix_fmt yuv422p10le test.mov

This works, and is displayed fine in After Effects and Premiere.  However, it does not play back correctly in Quicktime Player - it looks slightly "washed out".  My understanding of this is that Quicktime Player uses the "COLR" atom to determine the color space of the video file for playback.  So, after some research I came upon this ffmpeg option:
-movflags +write_colr

But, it doesn't seem to do anything.  Analyzing the video with "exiftool" shows that the atom was not written.
I am using FFMPEG version 2.8.6, installed with homebrew on Mac OS 10.11.3.
Anyone know how to make ffmpeg's movs comply with Quicktime Player's expectations?

That is an experimental flag, so you will have to use
-movflags +write_colr -strict experimental

Thank you!  That seems to work with all the codecs I try EXCEPT dnxhd.  Any ideas?  My command: -c:v dnxhd -b:v 175M -strict experimental -movflags +write_colr

Which is strange since the only codec it is meant for is DNxHD 1080I 120M. But the strict flag should force it elsewhere. Are you seeing the COLR atom created with other codecs? Use atomicparsely to check atoms.

AtomicParsely seems not to like Quicktime files.  exiftool works though.  The output to look out for from exiftool is Color Representation            : nclc 1 1 1

I can't seem to get ffmpeg to write this atom at all when using "dnxhd".  It does work with "prores_ks".  How did you get it to work with dnxhd?

Check the playback in Quicktime, or ffprobe readout for the DNxHD output. Mediainfo reports color space characteristics ( prims, matrix..etc) that it doesn't when encoded without the color flag.

From ffprobe: Stream #0:0(eng): Video: dnxhd (AVdn / 0x6E645641), yuv422p10le(tv, bt709), 1920x1080, 176160 kb/s, 24 fps, 24 tbr, 12288 tbn, 12288 tbc (default)

The colorspace is recorded bt709. How's the playback in QT?

Looks "washed out" in QT, looks fine elsewhere.

All the colr atom function does is set the three color related variables, to bt709 in case of HD.  But that's already done in your case. So, try setting the gamma atom as well. Use -movflags +write_colr+write_gama -strict experimental

Only for QT playback, use -c:v dnxhd -b:v 175M -src_range 0 -dst_range 1 -pix_fmt yuv422p10le -movflags +write_colr -strict experimental test.mov

Thanks for the help, but this is not really a solution.  I want the movie to be rendered correctly for usage in any application, and also be viewable with correct colors in Quicktime Player.

Looks like DNxHD relies on the ACLR, not the COLR, atom. And ffmpeg does seem to write it correctly. I think the issue here is with your source, for which I have no details.


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FFMPEG prores_ks 4444 color shift
I am attempting to encode "ProRes 4444" movies with ffmpeg.  Some research led me to the "prores_ks" encoder, which is the only one of ffmpeg's prores encoders that supports "4444".
I used this command to test it out (input excluded):
-c:v prores_ks -f mov -profile:v 4444 test.mov

This produces a ProRes 4444 movie.  However, the colors appear darker than the original input.  After some research I came upon this option:
-vf colormatrix=bt601:bt709

Adding this filter seems to fix the problem.  However, the file size is for some reason considerably bigger.  Also, I do not like the idea that a filter has to be performed during this encoding, as I want the highest possible quality.  Does anyone know of a way to overcome this "color shift" without a video filter?

The input is a PNG sequence.

I've tried both 8 and 16 bit, out of After Effects.  Here's a PNG and a MOV made with ffmpeg, using command ffmpeg -r 24 -i colorbars_8bit.png -c:v prores_ks -profile:v 4444 colorbars_prores_ks.mov: https://file.io/SeKH8I

Interestingly, Natron's "WriteFFmpeg" module does not seem to have this problem.

I believe the problem lies in how FFMPEG does the RGB->YUV conversion by default.  This option specifies the use of the bt709 color space for the conversion, instead of the default of bt601.  This fixes it for me - though please let me know if I'm doing something bad here!
-vf scale=out_color_matrix=bt709

709 is default for HD, 601 for SD.


text:
How to multi track export audio from After Effects to Audition
I have a fairly complex AE project with multiple audio files playing at different times.  I'd like to make the final audio edit using Audition.
What's the best way to get all of my audio tracks from AE into a multi-track session in Audition?
I tried exporting as Premiere Pro project, and opening as a Premiere project in Audition, but that just made a bounced-down version in Audition.
Do I have to export each audio track individually from AE using the "Edit Menu-->Edit in Adobe Audition"?  Is there a script somewhere to do this quickly?

Seen this?

Hi, yes.  He's manually placing each audio file into the timeline in Audition.  I already have them in the right places in my AE timeline - is there an automated way of getting them into Audition at the right timings? Thanks!

Noticed that. False advertising. Sorry. Open the prproj in premiere and do it from there.


text:
Active Presenter, Muting Single Layer
I'm using active presenter, and I'm trying to mute the audio on an mp4 file I imported, while keeping the mp3 file on another layer playing. But it's seeming that whenever I click properties on the item and go to mute the sound of the video file, it mutes every library file. Including the Mp3 I imported on another layer. And if I turn it back on in the MP3's properties, despite it listing the correct name of the item, it turns it back on for the MP4 file. How can I mute one file while another keeps playing? There's no separate layers for audio/video when I imported the Mp4, otherwise I'd have just deleted it that way. Thanks.

Maybe you have changed the system playback volume by clicking the sound icon in the Properties pane.
You can change the volume of (and mute) any layer or range by using the Adjust Volume tool in Timeline as shown in below image.


text:
Is it possible to see room noise?
In Adobe Audition, using any of the visualisation/analysis tools, is is it possible to see and isolate, then remove room/background noise?
Was wondering if there are certain frequencies that human voice operates within thus allowing the rest to be minimised or deleted.

Audition has specialized tools that allow you to isolate and remove noise. Have you looked at the official documentation? (Especially the capture noise print/remove noise combo)
https://helpx.adobe.com/audition/how-to/remove-noise-audio-files.html

Thanks for this, I think I should have asked: Are there bands in EQ that can be safely quashed that are outside of human voice. Thinking that if noise is not human noise it must be room/background noise.

Thee are some specific frequencies that human voice resides on. You can do a search for the details. However it is not that simple. First of all male and female voices differ. And the ranges themselves are pretty wide. Your best bet is to play around with all ranges and listen yourself for improvements.


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Loop count in video clip settings, how to apply changes to composition?
I created a grid of about 50 videos. I want them all to loop so I changed the loop count of the videos via Interpret Footage > Main... > Loop. The changes show up in the timeline, but they are not applied. When I let it preview it, the videos only run once.
I don't want to add those 50 clips again to the composition and apply the transforms.

I'm guessing your videos are of different durations. If no, just precompose the grid layers and loop that composition. If yes, worst case scenario is to precompose each video layer and loop those.

Yes, different durations. And I already added the videos to the composition thinking it would be easy to loop them later on. But now I set them all to loop, but when I render it, they only run once, then go to black. Although their new durations are shown in the timeline.

Does the extended duration look fully opaque or semi-transparent?

The normal duration is full color, and the extended duration is semi-transparent I think. There is a border at least, not sure if it's semi-transparent inside.

All you need to do is extend the tail-end of the normal duration. That's the only part trimmed for display in the composition.

Yes, that was it. Find out after a while.


text:
Photoshop animation dropping frames at 12fps or as image sequence
I have been kind of tearing my hair out trying to figure this out. I have a frame animation with 30 frames. I tried exporting it as a video set to 12fps. For some reason, what should be 2.5 seconds (30 frames at 12fps) is dropping down to 2 seconds on export. I thought it was some weird video codec glitch, but I discovered that the same thing happens when I export as an image sequence: Even though I have checked several times that "All Frames" was selected (other options are disabled anyway), I find only 24 pngs in my sequence where there should be 30.
Any help with this? It's a frame-by-frame rotoscoped animation so switching from frame animation to a timeline animation doesn't quite work. I know I can export frames manually by saving each frame one at a time, but it would be lovely to not have to do that (or to find a script that can do this for me to save time). The goal is to import the sequence to After Effects for additional animation/compositing.
I'll gladly share screenshots later tonight when I'm at my animation computer again.

Don't do the frame rate change in Photoshop.  Do it later on in AE.  Export all 30 frames from Photoshop, then import them into AE.  Make a new comp in AE, setting the new frame rate as 12fps in the comp settings.
Right click on your image sequence and choose "interpret footage as 12fps".

Do you mean that I should be exporting each frame manually? Because I was hoping for a workaround that uses what should be built-in functionality to export as an image sequence :( The image sequence export is dropping frames, too.

I think what he was saying is that you should export the animation as an image sequence, which gives you 30 single frames. Then, in AE you set these 30 frames to be running at 12fps.


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How to make interactive video presentation?
I need to make presentation, which will be used as background for stage play.
I work with After Effects and Premiere better, than with PowerPoint. And I see more possibilities in them. I can make better result in video editing software, then in PowerPoint. So it wold be great to find way, to make presentation in them.
Because it can take different amount of time for actors, to reach next "slide" in my "background presentation", I can't just make seamless video.
How I see it, each presentation "slide" can be made with endless loop of video, and at the click/keypress video should go to the next video-loop.
One variant is to make PowerPoint presentation with separate video in each slide... But PowerPoint work with videos pretty badly, how I remember.
What is the best way to accomplish my goal?
Thank you in advance!

Quickest way is to create each video with multiple repeats rendered in one file, enough to cover a worst case scenario. Queue these in a playlist in VLC, Potplayer ...etc and manually advance as necessary.
You may also want to look at video jockey (VJ) apps like LiVES. Since those are meant for interactive video manipulation and playback, they may have this functionality.

I think the best solution would be to save every video clip separately, and then someone else controlling the video clips know the timing of when to switch to the next clip.
Or, your could convert every clip as a .gif file, and then put 1 gif into its own google slides/ powerpoint slide.
Hope this helps!


text:
How can I make videos like Minute physics
I understood the fairly simple process behind the older Minute physics videos.
But I would like to know what kind of software/workflow is used for these new videos. What can I learn to make these kind of videos?

I am primarily a programmer, attempting to change to making educational videos.

He used this:

(source: monoprice.com)
He probably captured all of that with a plugin for After Effects and just added images and stuff.

It is same approaches, as before: he captured video as he drawing... Then added pictures and effects.
For more complex effects you need After Effects, but for more simple video, as just captured drawing process and images — you can use almost any video-editing software with timeline.

The figures don't look hand-drawn to me. They are too polished. But using some kind of handdrawn kinda font....or a graphics package.

He just know, how to draw... Or, please provide a timecode, where you think is not drawn object and not photo too.

The earlier videos were made manually on white paper. These are colored and uses design software tools. Something like sketchbook maybe? Any idea what software he could have used to handdraw on it using a graphic tablet?

You could use Animate (aka Flash) to do that, or draw the strokes in Illustrator and animate in After Effects. One thing you will need is a pressure-sensitive graphics tablet, like a Wacom.

The style You mentioned is called "Explainer Videos". There is plenty techniques that might be used to make such videos.
One would be that You record Your own voice first and then You try to make the drawings / illustrations match what You were just saying.
The other way is to have drawings ready and try to commentate over them.
Where it comes to software itself try exploring multiple options.

Adobe Illustrator
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe Audition

The list mentioned above would be my choice If I would start trying to get into such things.
The direct answer to the question "What can I learn to make this kind of videos?" would be:

Drawing and or illustrating
Animation
Basic audio manipulation
Composition in film

Or just try writing "How to make explainer videos" in any search engine for lots of material.

I believe this must have been created on a tablet with a software called Explain Everything.
It is a great tool that allows you to record your own animations.

Photoshop also has the ability to capture brush strokes and play them back. Similar to this:

But my guess is, most likely, After Effects. The drawn elements can be easily positioned,revealed and animated.

he must have drawn it first. Then on After Effects, he inverted the colours and added some pictures and graphic texts. or used the photoshop action record feature and added images on after effects. don't know maybe wrong.


text:
Unedit, remove all edits Video
How do I remove all edits from my video and view the original footage? I have tried and looked up everything
 I have gotten closest with after effect and Adobe Media converter.

We need more details about how you edited your video originally.

If I have guessed correctly, you uploaded a file to Youtube, edited it using its online editor, and now wish to recover the original file.
If so, you will need to use the Google Takeout service. Select only Youtube. There's no way to download just one of your videos.


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Use ffplay to check how much to brighten video before using ffmpeg?
I have a video which is a bit dark that I'd like to re-encode and brighten up with ffmpeg.
As a smarter/faster alternative to running ffmpeg in trial/error mode, is there a way to simply use ffplay to find how much to brighten things up, before running ffmpeg with the same settings?
"ffplay -h" returns so much infos that it's hard for newbies :-/
Thank you.

You can use simple filtergraphs easily with ffplay.
Example using colorlevels filter in ffplay:
ffplay -vf colorlevels=rimax=0.902:gimax=0.902:bimax=0.902 input.mp4

Then you can use the same filter in ffmpeg:
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf colorlevels=rimax=0.902:gimax=0.902:bimax=0.902 -c:a copy output.mp4

This example will stream copy the audio.

Thanks for the help. "colorlevels" as used above or even raised to 1 made no difference, but did the job: "-vf lutyuv=y=val*1.5"

@Gulbahar The values used in my example were probably too subtle (I was lazy and just copied an example from the documentation); you would have needed to lower the values for a greater effect. However, it's good you found an alternative: there are several filters that can brighten the video.


text:
Sharpen DV footage after upscale to HDV
I have some DV footage that I'm using in an HDV sequence and have upscaled it to mach the resolution of the HDV footage (1080i), what's the best way to get rid of the resulting blurriness?
I'm using premiere pro.

Related question: https://video.stackexchange.com/q/23269/6009

Since you're scaling 2x or more, your best bet is to upscale the DV again using Avisynth with the nnedi rpow2 filter, then scale, if necessary, to HDV.
(With some tangible details, I can provide an example script.)
Trying to sharpen the upscaled videos will produce worse results than the above method.

Upscaling an image is always difficult as you can never completely recover the details. There are some tools, however, that can give you a higher-quality and sharper result than the typical resizing algorithms used in most players and editors (nearest neighbor, bilinear, bicubic). Some options that you might like to explore:

If you’re familiar with AviSynth scripting, checkout the nnedi3 rpow2 function [freeware]
Adobe After Effects (and possibly Premiere Pro now?) has a feature called Detail-preserving upscale
DaVinci Resolve 15 has a feature called “Super Scale”
Topaz Gigapixel AI uses advanced AI datasets to upscale images and fill in missing information. It’s designed for still images but you can use it for video by exporting all frames as images, upscaling and then recombining.


text:
After Effects rendering wrong colors?
I'm creating a video using After Effects CC 2015 for use it on a website.
The background of the page on the site is #607D8B, so the first thing I did was create a solid with that color, and the color was right, however when I rendered, the color changed to #6e8995.
What are the settings I need to do to avoid this problem? I exported using Adobe Media Encoder and the standard H264.
Thank you.

Sounds like a color space / range flag or rendering issue. Quickest way to resolve this is to take a short screencast i.e. video capture of the page. Load that into After Effects and pick that color. You can't take a screnshot. It has to be a video. OBS, ffmpeg, VLC, Screenflow, Camtasia..etc can all screen-record.

As Mulvya says - it sounds like a color space export issue..
See this previous answer - Color shift after exporting!
I think this could be to do with "color space". I've had similar issues with exporting videos from After Effects. Exporting using "REC 709" Color space usually gives me the colours I expect. You can read more about how Adobe handle different Color spaces here:
http://wwwimages.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/devnet/aftereffects/articles/color_management_workflow/ae_color_mgmt_wkflow.pdf

Mov output came exact color. what we're expected.
please check below image.

If you want you can use mov output instead of H.264 mp4 output.
Please check your project color settingss. Keep default settings

Go to Composition->Add to Render Queue->Lossless.
Change Format default AVI to Quicktime.
Please check below image
Keep color management also default setting.

Then Press Ok to get output.
Check now


text:
After effects cc render time issues
I recently made a video 3 minutes long with trapcode particular, 2 light layers and some simple expressions for particular (wiggle and time).
Rendering in quicktime h264, 1080p 30fps.
I started to render the video and on first it showed 28 minutes remaining. I was extremely happy with that. Came back 30 minutes later and now it was estimating 1h 20 minutes. Came back hour later and now it was at 1h 54min.
Although the rendering was now going for more than hour. The time kept increasing.
I decided to stop and use adobe encoder, with h264 and matching video settings high bitrate. Encoder at the start gave me 1hour and later increased that again.
So few hours later I am using after effects built in rendering and time remaining is 1hour 30 min and elapsed is at 3hr 44min and more than half way through rendering.
How could it be increasing all the time? I am using after effects for about a month now so I don't know all the hacks. I am using intel i5-6400 2.7ghz with 8gb of ram and 4gb of ddr5 gpu geforce gtx 750 ti.
Would it help if I would render particles separate with alpha channel and then add it to full composition? Would that reduce time?
Sorry for such bad explanation. English is not native for me.

Often when you hit a render time wall like that, where the time per frame keeps increasing it's because you've run out of physical RAM and the system is paging out to disk (thousands of times slower). Check to see if you've run out of RAM.

@stib I rendered again just to see if there is any changes to make render faster. After letting it render for an hour after effects only used 2.5gb of ram. Which I think is nothing and it could use more. I did set it to leave only 1.5 for other software.
Also my cores are not fully used. They are at 50% on average. How could I make it to like 90%?
I am using SSD to save files and run after effects.

I usually export as a ProRes Quicktime movie from After Effects directly, then convert my ProRes file to h264.  I keep the ProRes as a master file, and compress the h264 as needed.  Also sometimes restarting AE before rendering fixes any slowdowns.  If the particles are using large (greater than 200x200 pixel) layers for their textures, this will make things render very slowly.

Could the slowdown be also because I am using expression?
Or it does not affect it much. I have applied expression to velocity and particles per second.

It could do- depends what the time expressions are doing. Did you try a pro res render instead f h264? Tends to be quicker in my experience. Also how many particles are we talking about? Are you applying textures to them?

Expressions are pre-calculated I believe. So if there are heavy expressions in the comp it takes a while before it starts rendering. You could try converting all the expressions to keyframes to test whether it's the expressions. I agree with Tom: rendering to h.264 isn't the best way to go, because h.264 uses inter frame compression each frame is dependent on lots of other frames, which makes it slower to render.

@tomh I am not applying texture to them, but I am playing around with setting when each particle emit particles. I think it was aux settings. I have set it to to 1 particles per second, but I think because each particle emits another particle is the reason why it's slow.

@stib I will give it a go tomorrow.

Would it be better to put different elements in pre-comp or leave everything in one giant comp? like background in one pre comp, particles in other.
Also would it decrease overall render time, if I render each such pre-comp separate with alpha channel and then put everything back together to render the final comp? Or it's a waste of time?

Pre rendering comps is useful if the items in the pre render don't need any more tweaking. So if you're still working on the overall project but the particles are finished, maybe I would pre-render them.


text:
In Windows, how do I find the geotags for videos shot in iOS?
I have footage shot with the stock iPhone Camera app (5S running iOS 8.x).  Inside iOS Photos, I can see the geo coordinates where each video was shot.  However, I don't know how to get at that information once I'm in Windows and looking at the same .mov file.  I'm on Windows 10, for what it's worth.

Use exiftool, a command-line tool. GUI available from here.
Relevant feature:

Reads EXIF, GPS, IPTC, XMP, JFIF, MakerNotes, GeoTIFF, ICC Profile,
  Photoshop IRB, FlashPix, AFCP, ID3 and more.

Should look like this, in readout:

GPSCoordinates                  : 20.884100° N, 21.319300° E, 17 m
  Above Sea Level


text:
Animate two layers along identical path
I have made simple animation where a hand drags an item onto a page.  I wanted them to take a curved path so I have added a bezier curve to the path as shown below

This only effects one of the layers so I manually put the same curve into the second layer but it is not perfect.  I can see the hand and the contact us box move slightly differently.
How do I lock both layers on the exact same path?

In addition to @inevitably answer. You shall use parenting, but better not to parent one layer to another, but create Null Object with that monition curve, and parent both layers to it.
Why it may be important:
If you need any motion of "parent layer" in variant provided by @inevitably, it will be pretty difficult to move it without moving child layer. But with Null Object, it will be pretty easy.

You could Parent one layer to the other.
This means that one layer controls the position/rotation/scale of the other layer.
See https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/layer-properties.html#parent_and_child_layers
for more info.


text:
Reset timecode in source footage to 00:00:00
I have an MOV footage clip supplied by a freelancer that starts timecode at 11:48:09.
It's a standalone clip that I don't need to retain that timecode for.
Would be very useful to reset it to  00:00:00.
Is there any way of doing this in any of the CC apps, FCPX or freeware utilities/apps?

You can use ffmpeg, a free command-line tool, like so
ffmpeg -i input.mov -c copy -map 0 -dn output.mov

The -c copy sees that there's no re-encoding, the -map 0 copies everything over but the -dn disables data tracks - the timecode being a data track.

You can do this upon export from Premiere.
Load up your clip, export timeline (use Cineform or Prores for lossless if you'll be re-inserting into another project), and click the "Set Start Timecode" checkbox.


text:
How to get a clip with the same aspect ratio and without losing quality
orig.mod - properties:
Frame width 720
Frame height 576
Data rate 8900kbps
Total bitrate 9284kbps
Frame rate 25 frames/second

Audio
Bit rate 384kbps
Channels 2(stereo)
Audio sample rate 48kHz

I need a short clip of the above file, and tried using Sony Vegas Pro 13 and Premiere cc pr0 2015. In both applications I choose to adjust resulting file to the original, especially regarding frame size and frame rate. Result is simmilar in both applications:
result.mpg (tried .mp4 and .wmv also)
Frame width 720
Frame height 576
Data rate 9500kbps
Total bitrate 9724kbps
Frame rate 25 frames/second

Audio
Bit rate 224kbps
Channels 2(stereo)
Audio sample rate 48kHz

Main specifications are the same, but playing both file, using VLC and WMP players, what I see is - result.mpg is much narrower than orig.mod. Height is the same. That means aspect ratio is changed.
Also, result.mpg has poor quality, comparing to original.
Any help.

Check you pixel aspect ratio.  Its in the video settings in premiere.  My guess is its not matching the original file. Play around with the different settings.  Usually square pixels do it for me.
Adobe Premiere Pro CC aspect ratio streched

It won't be square pixels here, since .mod files are SD format signals of certain old JVC/Canon cameras. So, either 1.092 for overscanned print or 1.06667 for full aperture.


text:
Reference Request: Camera Movements
In order to produce a new logo revealing animation I was just searching the web for useful reference pages dealing with advanced camera movements. By "Camera movements" I don't mean the basic tilting, panning & dolly stuff.
I am actually searching for advanced camera movements, for example in this video (sec 58) when the mic comes up.

Does anyone know some resource pages with good explanations and maybe examples of advanced camera movements with regard to create specific emotional impact?

Zolly (dolly zoom) is pretty good for any emotional impact. Don't over use it though.

Mic shot looks like a dolly back tilt to track the subject. This is a compound movement that is natural to do with a hand held camera but more challenging when using a digital camera. Try tracking your camera to a null object in the scene roughly in the same place as the subject, but you can then move the null away from the subject to get better balanced framing.
Try using a handheld real world camera, like a phone, to rehearse shots around a substitute object like a glass or cup. Just fly around but try to stick to a fixed duration, a slow shot might last 6 seconds and a quick move might be 2 seconds. This will give you an idea how long a move takes while still being comfortable to watch later.
They used to do this revisualisation in the movies all the time, before CG came along.

very helpful and interesting answer, thank you for that!

The effect you see in sec 58 with the microphone, well the part that gives you the emotional reaction, is called Perspective Control. It is not limited to animated material, you can in fact obtain it in live filming by using a tilt lens. You can read more about the science of this effect in Wikipedia. For ideas on using it in After Effects I suggest going over the various forums, they offer plenty of discussions and collective experience to learn from.


text:
Best format to export to in blender
I am using blender video sequence editor feature. When I export my video I have subtle quality loss. There are mild flickering artifacts. I have a couple question related to that.
First one, is what is the best format to export to?
It has two places to set formats, which I am not sure the difference.
Under output I can set a tab described as "File format to save rendered images as"
There under video format that allow sound I can select h264, mpeg, ogg theora, and xvid.
Then I have an encoding tab that has a format option described "Output file format" where I can set
flash, matroska, ogg, xvid, h264, dv, quicktime, avi, mpeg4 mpeg2 mpeg1.
Which one of these is best for quality?

The first problem you have to solve is whether the flickering you see is part of your animation or part of the video encoder.  If you have bad normals in your faces, you'll see a flicker.  ProRes 422HQ produces a video file that's both low enough of a bitrate that most modern (post 2008) hardware can play without dropping frames, as well as high enough of a bitrate that you will not see any compression artifacts.  If you still see flickering, the problem is with your model, not your video encoder.  If you see no flickering, then start wandering through the settings of whatever video encoding format you are most likely to use for final product.  If the video's final resting place will be YouTube, that would be H.264.  If it's your laptop or desktop computer, it might be ProRes (Mac) or AVI (Windows) or Ogg (Linux).

Neither ProRes nor DNxHD isn't supported at the moment. Related discussion here: https://developer.blender.org/T35615


text:
Avid/Pinnacle Liquid
I have a licensed copy of Liquid on my Windows XP machine. No matter what I've tried, I can't move or reinstall it to my Windows 8.1 machine. Any suggestions?

Which version no.?

It's version 7.20, build 4296

The Avid Liquid product line was EOLed in 2010 and Windows XP SP2 is the latest Windows version supported.
At the Liquid forum, someone suggests a method to install Liquid 7.2 on Windows 7. See if you can use it for Windows 8.1

I haven't had a chance to try this yet. Thanks for the suggestion.


text:
Why do cinema cameras cost too much?
Why do professional digital cinema cameras like ARRI ALEXA, RED Epic cost that much? They record 4k so do other cheap cameras?

Look at it from a data rate point of view: a GH4 records 4K at 100 Mbps.  A RED Carbon Fiber WEAPON records at 300MBps.  That's 24x the data rate.  Look at how very much more expensive it is to purchase a CPU that's 10% or 30% faster than "normal" and you might then have some understanding of how much more expensive it is to offer 10x or 30x the performance in a camera body.

You are probably comparing cameras that record compressed 4k video with cameras that record uncompressed video, i.e. RAW footage. The ARRI ALEXA and RED Epic belong in the latter category.
The hardware for cameras capable of recording RAW footage is more expensive. Also, it hasn't been around for as long and as with every new technology, prices start higher (for example, 4k cameras are more expensive than Full HD cameras right now). Wait a couple of years and 4k RAW cameras will most likely be available starting at much lower prices. Here's a Wikipedia list of cameras that are capable of recording RAW footage. As you can see, it's not very long yet …

The image processing of cinema cameras is done with fairly inexpensive FPGA chips, that doesn't explain a 50.000€ price difference between I.e. a gh4 and a arri Alexa. The FPGA chip used in blackmagic products is sub 10€, so even if the Red or Alexa use a 100€ fpga, that's not the point. Media storage is also not the point, since all vendors use standard media like ssd's, cf/cfast, SD card etc.
The single most expensive part in any video camera is usually the sensor, and there are very big differences in image quality when using different sensors which come at very different price points.
There are also some really big differences in manufacturing quality, also in the materials used. But the main difference is service, quality assurance and: R&D. Even when the Alexa only was available as a 2.5k version, it completely wiped the competition off the scene in the drama / feature section of cinema. That is because arri spend a lot of time and work to achieve a consistent and highest level image quality.
To give you and example from the sound world: schoeps (which produce some of the best and most expensive microphones) artifically age their mics in a climate chamber by 10 years before selling them to make sure each microphone keeps its quality over a long time... A company like rode, which sells ok quality, fairly cheap microphones could not do that or they would loose money on each sale.
Different markets have different requirements. A feature film production can easily cost a couple of million euro / dollar, so a budget of 100.000€ for the camera department is not much In comparison. What is really expensive though is loosing shooting days to a camera not working. So the focus in professional film production is not on how much resolution does camera X have but how reliable can the crew work with it.
This whole business goes as far as offering products that are not for sale but only available as rentals, like panavision cameras or the 65mm sensor Alexa.

BTW for completeness sake, almost all cameras record compressed data also the ones referred to as recording uncompressed video.  RedCode,  the Codec used in Red cameras compresses the chroma Bayer data of the raw image if I remember correctly even with a ratio of 1:7 min, in Blackmagic cameras they use cdng (compressed DNG) which is lossless unlike RedCode. Don't know about arri. More appropriate would be the term lossless although Codecs like prores are also referred to as "visually lossless" which is just marketing.

In addition to the points above, keep in mind that cinema cameras also have a host of features not found in cell phones and lower-end cameras, such as removable lenses, better autofocus, better bodies that may be weather-resistant or weatherproof. They also have larger sensors which cost more, and the specs on the sensors are probably better than in low-end 4K cameras. (For example 3 CCD cameras with a separate sensor for red, green, and blue, as opposed to a single Bayered CMOS sensor.)


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Coaxial to HDMI
I recently had my basement finished and the contractor ran a coax line from my satellite receiver behind the wall to my TV.  The receive is behind the bar, and the TV is on the wall.  I didn't notice it was a coax cable until after the drywall was up.  Is there any converter that I can put on the coax to change the HDMI?
Thanks.

Bandwidth issues aside, HDMI is "protected" by HDCP, which prevents you from doing anything like this.
Depending on how noisy your neighborhood is RF-wise, this could work for you:
http://www.amazon.com/Nyrius-Transmitter-Streaming-Satellite-NPCS549/dp/B009E6R89C

I'm taking a stab in the dark here, but you might be able to cut the ends off the coaxial cable and replace them with BNC, which might make this effectively SDI. You then get an SDI to HDMI converter.
I don't understand coaxial very well, but I know that "SDI is transmitted over 75 Ohm coax cable with BNC connectors." (Source) To me, they've always seemed like the same thing with different connectors. However, the actual wire in a coaxial might not be the same as the SDI spec requires. Often, wires have their specs printed on the pvc casing. See if it matches SDI specs, then you can try this with decent chances it will work.
But in your situation, replacing with BNC connectors and trying an SDI-HDMI converter should only be about $50. That's mostly for the crimp tool and a bag of BNC connectors. You can return the SDI to HDMI converter if it doesn't work.
I did run across this on a similar question: Edision HDMI Modulator Full HD Distribution over Coax


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Storyboarding for beginners
I wanna get more professional with videography and I'm looking for a structured way to make a concept before I start shooting. I'd like to be able to split a clip into scenes and determine how to film it with the equipment I have, e.g. how many cameras, what angles etc.
I read an article about storyboarding software/apps for beginners a couple days ago, but I can't find it anymore. Do you have any recommendations on how to start with this?
Thanks in advance :)

DAZ3D is a great program for very quickly creating storyboards. It has a relatively short learning curve compared to other 3D applications. And it's FREE.
It comes with basic models to start. If you need specific models you can buy them (they are relatively cheap), or use simple geometry objects as place holders which you can generate in the program at no cost.
The nice thing about the program is it renders very fast in Texture mode, and you can set up cameras with actual focal lengths, so your storyboards can be built based on the lens lengths you will be using.

I've always just envisioned the film in my mind and sketched out (on actual paper) the shot angles.
Another option is to get miniatures of your locations, props and performers (dolls, action figures, etc.), position them as they'll be in the scene, and take photos of each of the angles you want in your storyboard. Then you have actual photos of the angles you want.
A third option is similar to the second:  Use miniatures, and then use a video camera to do the actual movements you want.  Someone could be reading lines of dialog aloud while you are shooting.  I saw a documentary showing that this was done during preproduction of Return of the Jedi for the speeder bike sequence on the forest moon of Endor.
With the first two options, I would have the storyboard on set with me, and put a mark next to each shot I'd gotten. That way I knew what I had left to shoot.


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How To add blank part in video for 1 hour
I have a video of 2 mins length.Now I want to add extra 1 hour to the video.I have done this be changing video duration in composition settings.But video is rendering for about 4 gb.Whereas original video is only 5 mb.
How to render this video in mp4 format with around 10mb size.

I don't know if the AE encoder can signal duplicate frames (which would keep the size down). You may be better off using ffmpeg, a command-line tool.
Suppose your source video is 1280x720 at 24 fps, then you would run
ffmpeg -i source.mp4 -f lavfi -i "color=black:s=1280x720:r=24:d=3600" -filter_complex "[0][1]concat=n=2:v=1:a=0[v]" -map [v] -c:v libx264 output.mp4

To combine with text overlay,
ffmpeg -i universal.mp4 -f lavfi -i "color=black:s=1280x720:r=24000/1001:d=20" -filter_complex "[0][1]concat=n=2:v=1:a=0[v];[v]drawtext=fontfile=FreeSerifBold.ttf:text=\'Hello World\':fontcolor=white@1.0:fontsize=16:x=w-tw-10:y=10:box=1:boxcolor=black@0.5[vout]" -map [vout] -map 0:a -c:v libx264 -profile:v main -movflags +faststart output.mp4 2>&1

What's the resolution and fps of short video?

1280x720 and 24fps

And also your source video is not 24 fps. It's 23.98 fps, which is 23.976 or precisely 24000/1001 fps.

Webplayer in the sense HTML5 video player in websites. I am so sorry .  it freezes for 5 to 10 seconds, when you seek in middle .I donno how to describe.It is like video is 1 hour, when i seek to 20th minute,it freeze for 5 to 10 seconds , then contines to play...

Yes, because, in high profile, which is what libx264 produces by default, many reference frames are used including future frames. So, the player has to decode many frames before it can finally decode the seek point frame. Use edited command.

Thank you , Please check http://photoapp.biz/api/ffmpeg/universal-full.mp4 , video is not playing for first 30 seconds in chrome

Also check the output for that video - https://jsfiddle.net/g8m4jsn0/

Plays here in Chrome 48 correctly with no delay.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.


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Quality loss when exporting on Adobe Premiere
I'm having some trouble when exporting a sequence in Adobe Premiere CS6. There is a quality loss: image are more pixelated and colors are more bland.
I'm exporting in H.264 format and it's 1920x1080 footage. I tried every possibility of configurations and it keep exporting less good quality.
Here are some screenshots, so you can compare the original quality and what comes out from exportation:

Thank you for your help !

Use a visually lossless (intermediary) codec when going between different editing applications. Avid DNxHR, Apple Prores, Edius HQX, and GoPro Cineform are all examples of intermediary codecs. I personally prefer DNxHR, but all the options I listed are good options.
You can also use dynamic link between After Effects and Premiere, which would be even better.

I only use one editing application which is Premiere. So I don't think that's where the problem is... :-)

Make sure it's not a playback issue. Different players may show differences in gamma etc., you can see it for yourself when opening a h264 encoded clip in QuickTime vs. VLC vs. Flash based player in a Browser. Did you take the Screenshots in the same player when comparing original vs exported material?

Yes, I did ! :-) Both with VLC. What I really don't understand is that this quality loss appears only when exported. In the preview panel in Premiere, the image is perfect...

Check out this thread, sounds pretty similar to what you are facing: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1063696?start=0

Thank you for the link. Indeed the washed out colors seems similar to my problem but there is nothing about the more pixelated image... And besides, I'm on a PC with an AMD Radeon graphic card.
Altough I tried some of their propositions of solution but nothing worked. I just posted my problem on the topic.
I hope someone will know what matters... :-)

You will always recompress after saving in Premiere, or any other editing program. So quality loss is inevitable.
For best match to the source footage, try to export with same codec, as video was recorded.

I worked with Premiere CS5.5 for several projects and I never had such a loss of quality before. And how to find the right codec ? :-)


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Why is a screencast produced by Quicktime (.mov) is much smaller than the converted MP4 file?
I recently recorded numerous screencasts using Quicktime.  The .mov files produced by Quicktime are 2876x1748.
To goal was to upload the files to YouTube and so I wanted to convert to the recommended format.  Since I had to merge 3 clips into one, I used a tool called iSkySoft iMedia Converter Deluxe to merge and convert.
The settings selected were optimised for YouTube (Settings were H.264 and resulting video was scaled down to 720P)
Interestingly, the MP4 files produced were significantly larger than the original .mov files!  The .mov files combined were ~ 1.5GB at a higher resolution and the merged & converted MP4 file was 2.2GB.
Is this to be expected?  Or could there be something wrong with the conversion tool being used?

What Codec is the QuickTime recorded in?

More specifically: H.264 MPEG4 AVC (part 10) (avc1).  And the MP4 for output by iSkySoft iMedia Converter Deluxe uses exactly the same codec & but has a higher frame rate. 50 vs 60.  Could the frame rate account for such a difference in file size, despite the resolution being more than halved.

Ultimately, it comes down to bitrate, whether expressly set or determined by other factors, such as framerate, resolution, quality setting. What does mediainfo say about your source files?

I don't think it's the framerate. Maybe check with mediainfo to see more specific settings of each Codec. Apart from the bitrate, there are plenty of settings that can influence file size, even when using the same Codec.


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Adobe Premiere lagging video playback
Premiere Pro CC 2015 and I have not had such a smooth existence. For some reason, Premiere will playback fine with no dropped frames, and then after about 10-15 seconds it starts dropping frames. This typically starts at the beginning of a new clip, and then continues to the next. This happens far less frequently when color correction isn't applied, such as MBL 12 (not gpu accelerated) or even Lumetri (gpu accelerated), however, on occasion it does still happen. I've checked my processes and the CPU, RAM, or VRAM are not saturated. Now the kicker is, all I have to do to stop the lag is to press space to stop playback, and again to start again.
System specs: i7 3930k, 32gb DDR3 1600, GTX 980ti 6GB VRAM, SSD for Premiere, HDD for cache files and media for the project
Files: ranging from ProRes, .mxf, DNXHD, .etc.
I figured it could be the following scenario:

audio related? I've had a situation before where an audio effect (not applicable to this question) actually brought my timeline to a halt w.r.t. playback
loading up different codecs on the same timeline (hence this happens at the start of a single clip and then bogs down the timeline)
HDD isn't fast enough, replace with SSD

Has anyone experienced anything similar, and perhaps can help me find a solution?

Are you using multicamera clips? There was some sort of bug when using h264 multicamera clips some time ago. Only way I could resolve it at that moment (since there was no Bugfix yet) is transcode all the h264 to prores... Also make sure you have a recent nvidia driver, CUDA driver and the correct settings for "mercury transmit" or how the GPU acceleration part of Adobe is cryptically called.

My experience is that people that complain about choppy playback have either outdated hardware, or are using very esoteric formats, and/or have a system with a lot of crap on it, that seriously gets in the way of editing. You are definitely not in the first category, I don't know the origin of your clips and the codec used, so you could be in the second category, but most likely you have a polluted system.

And there is a third category of users, those affected by one of the numerous bugs that every premiere version has. I stopped counting the times that something did not work with premiere and the only thing you could find was a thread on the Adobe Forum ending in users asking adobe to fix that bug.

@HansMeiser the issue was fixed with the update.

Your media HDD could be the bottleneck, especially if pausing playback is giving it enough time to buffer.

after about 10-15 seconds it starts dropping frames

This is another sign of media buffering not keeping up with playback.
Try temporarily switch the media cache / scratch disk to the SSD and see if performance improves.

will do! i've upgraded to the 980ti and that seems to have improved things. i've got a spare ssd i use for my ninja that i will install and use for cache

Great!  I'm very curious whether it works.

Premiere related. Was fixed with the update.


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How to stabilize exposure in After Effects?
I have a footage which was shot by a mobile phone. Phone was put on auto exposure, and mobile was not able to calculate exposure correctly in video.
First half of the video is exposed correctly, the second half is underexposed.
I am not able to fix the second half of the video. I tried some of the effects but all of them apply on all of the footage. So if I correct the second half of the video, the first half is over exposed.
I am using After Effects CC.

Have you tried splitting the layer at the start of the overexposure point using Ctrl+Shift+D and then disabling effects on the layer trimmed to show the first half?

@Mulvya The exposure doesn't translate in a snap. It takes 1-2 secs to translate from normal to underexposed.

Place the effects-disabled layer on top. Fully expand the corrected layer in the timeline and trim the top (uncorrected) layer till the exposure change starts. Maybe extend it a bit more and animate its opacity so that the transition is smoother.

The under exposed section will never have as much detail in the shadows as the correctly exposed section, so you will never be able to make the second section look as good as the first. Having said that:
You need to duplicate your layer, then correct the exposure in the second half using level controls, or colour correction effects.
As you correct, switch the layer on and off, to compare it with a good part of the first layer.
Once the second half is looking better, then work on the transition point.
The second layer should be on top of the first layer.
Make some Opacity key frames on your second layer, starting at 0% and building up to 100% when the poor exposure section has fully begun.
You may find that a dedicated application like Davinci Resolve (the free version) is better for colour correction than After Effects.


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Weird glitches in After Effects render
was wondering if any of you knew how to fix this issue. When I render my comp in After Effects, I see these weird glitches in the render (like black triangular spots of missing video).
I have uploaded an example of the issue here:

I had something similar recently and - sorry to say - didn't find a solution. I assume in my case it was / is a bug in the effect used. It had to do with masks / alpha channel but since I needed to use a specific mask, I couldn't work around the bug.

Had the same problem. Put a black solid in the background. It worked for me.


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How to prevent lossy re-encode of low-bitrate videos uploaded to YouTube
I have a huge number of low-res Flash videos (480x270, 30 fps, 800 Kbps) and I want to resample all those videos in 1280x720 with some added spatial sharpening and lomo filters to make them look nicer. I intend to store these larger videos on a HDD and also upload them on YouTube.
The total running time of the videos is around 50 days, so I'm not going to use a lossless codec. I experimented a bit and found that anything over 2 Mbps (H.264) didn't result in a noticeable increase in visual quality, which isn't surprising considering the tiny original resolution. 50 days at 2 Mbps is about 1 TB which would be great.
The problem is that YouTube seems hell-bent on re-encoding anything that is being uploaded regardless of the actual bitrate, so even though the local 1280x720 videos look great the uploaded 1280x720 videos look awful. I found some official recommended upload encoding settings but using those settings still results in compression artefacts.
How can I avoid the artefacts from YouTube's lossy re-encode without uploading videos of a significantly higher bitrate?
(I'm currently using Avidemux for resampling/re-encoding but from what I've read most people use Handbrake or MeGUI; should I switch or is Avidemux fine for my purposes?)

Youtube will necessarily transcode everything you upload. Before wasting a lot of time trying out different H.264 bitrates and encoding flags, transcode one of the clips to 720p using a lossless codec and upload that. See how much difference does make that on Youtube. That will set the ceiling on what you can expect.

Youtube applies different maximum bitrates to different HD formats. A lot of people these days upscale their original 1080p HD content to 4k, since youtube allows higher datarate for 4k. Probably the same applies to 720p vs. 1080p, you should check. In general, you can optimize a video a lot so the same bitrate encoding will result in better quality, mainly by denoising it beforehand - or in you case, deblocking. I don't know if you are aquainted with AviSynth etc. but there are a couple of deblocking filters for it which might come in handy. From my experience there is no big difference if uploading a h264 with a high bitrate (like 25Mbps) or a ProRes file, after Youtube recompression quality is the same.

Could you expand a bit on the denoising & deblocking bit? In particular, Avidemux handles denoising with filters and I have no idea which of the 7 denoising filters to use, and if the denoising filter should be loaded before or after other filters like resampling and sharpening for the best quality/bitrate.
Edit: Wait, I see only 3 of those filters seem to actually be denoising filters; "FluxSmooth", "Mplayer Denoise 3D" and "Mplayer Denoise 3D HQ". The HQ filter has the most options but I don't know what those options do.

I am assuming that at 800kbit your flv files show quite some compression artifacts. The problem is that these are not well "compressible"...

I'm general, technical noise (imagine all possible values of a signal in random order) is not well compressible since same values rarely happen in succession and therefore cannot be reduced well. So denoising a video works wonders in terms of getting a better result. H264 does denoising in general during compression, so I guess noise will not be the problem in your clips but rather the compression artifacts.

Generally speaking the best denoisers use a wavelet algorithm, so check if one of the denoisers that come with avidemux uses that technology (if your clips have noise) - as for deblocking maybe do some tests with this filter: http://www.compression.ru/video/deblocking/index_en.html

Well the original videos actually don't have many compression artefacts; after all 800 Kbps is quite good for 480x270. For reference, YouTube suggests 300-700 Kbps for 240p.

Ah OK, missed the framesize you where dealing with. Still, deblocking might do some good to counter the blockiness resulting from the upscaling, just give it a try.

Out of curiosity, what kind of footage are you dealing with that is 50 days long???

BTW given the amount of transcoding you are looking forward to, I'd research if there are decent gpu accelerated tools nowadays. I am not on Windows for quite some time anymore so I kind of lost track with the stuff that's going on there.

Well, I've got 6 cores à 4 GHz and Avidemux is very good at using all of them, so I'm fine in that regard. The videos are a couple hundred football matches, and I just discovered that denoising makes the grass look a solid green, so I'll do without.

If it kills all detail, then you used too much of it ;)

Also, deblocking is not the same as denoising.


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Insert pictures randomly into a video
I have a lot of pictures, which I want to randomly insert all of them into a movie.

I have a mac but also can use windows if needed. don't have any software for it yet and of course prefer a free software but if not possible I don't mind to buy a software for it. Thanks
Background: It's my partner's birthday and I would like to project her photos inserted randomly (doesn't matter where in the movie) into the movie which is related to the party theme.

What do you mean by 'insert'? Do you want a slideshow where you see one of the images at a time filling the entire screen? Or some kind of collage? And how many images are we talking about, 100 or 10.000?

I don't quite understand if you want a macro / script which randomly distributes photos over a timeline before you render out a movie or do you want this to happen in realtime? If the latter is the case probably you want to look at software aimed towards Vjs, Here is a thread discussing free vj tools: http://vjforums.info/threads/is-there-any-free-vj-software.30990/

@MoritzLost Number of pictures is around 250 and the length of the movie is 120 minutes. the entire screen will be fine also collage or any effects. Just adding 250 photos one by one can be quite time consuming and that's why I'm hoping there is an easier way!

@HansMeiser Sorry if the question is not clear. I don't need a script or anything like that. Just want to have these images in the movie (fullscreen or some random effects). Adding 250 pictures one by one can be a bit time consuming hence I'm asking if there's any easy way. Thanks

Ah OK, so something like the thing that is strangely referred to as the "Ken burns" effect - strange because I think he is pretty unknown in Europe. There is a 3rd party preset for after effects, if you got that as well: http://www.proloststore.com/products/burns  alternative you can animate a couple of images yourself in premiere, save those animations on keyframes and drop it on the image sequence you created from your photos.

You can use HITFILM EXPRESS. Its absolutely free non-linear editor.
Get Hitfilm Express here : https://hitfilm.com/express
You can drop a sequence of images at once. For this you can refer this YouTube tutorial :

Then you can apply some transitions between the pictures and add a music track to complete the video.
Tutorial on how to apply transitions in Hitfilm Express :

If you have a MAC you can use the following basic software:
iPhoto - create an ALBUM containing the pictures you want to insert into the video.
iMovie - Import the video you want to use in the project as the main storyline (In the left sidebar click "Photos Library" to access your photos, click the photo, move the playhead in the main storyline to where you want to insert the photo THEN:
press "Q" (connect edit) to connect the picture above the storyline (you have options to set the picture as split screen, cutaway, or picture in picture) OR
press "W" (insert edit) to insert the picture in the storyline (you can set transitions between the inserted pictures).
(ripple training.com has a training video on iMovie basics that is great)


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Getting weird noise when using an attenuator cable
I'm using a -25Db attenuator cable (this one) to connect an audio mixer to my camera. Now, I've tested the cable by connecting my DAP to the camera, and it works just fine. But when I connect the attenuator cable, even without an audio mixer plugged-in, I hear background noise. When I turn on the audio mixer but don't have any input sources for it, the noise is even louder. When I connect a radiomic to the mixer, the loud noise is still there, coupled with the audio from the microphone.
Can someone help me figure out what's going on here? Am I somehow using an attenuator cable incorrectly? I doubt it's faulty considering that connecting a DAP to my camera results in a good, clean signal and no noise on the line.

What is a DAP??

did you check if the input volume is somewhere in a decent range? Or is this auto level control? What camera are you talking about?

@HansMeiser DAP = digital audio player. There is a level control, I've tried going up and down, the noise is still there. The camera is Sony a7R II.

What kind of mixer do you use and did you try to connect it with a regular (non attenuator) cable?


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Heavy automatition with scripting for videos - ffmpeg?
Been here i found a lot of question involving ffmpeg and its filters, however the filters are already built-in and what you generally do is calling them with various parameters.
What was wondering is if ffmpeg or other FLOSS software supports some more advanced scripting for do things like automatic cut and join pieces with transitions based on certain audio highlights or other heavy automatition things less hard-coded and more coding aimed.
A sort of script support for ffmpeg would be the ideal because all the things could be carried inside the powerful ffmpeg core without have to use an intermediate lossless codec in order to not lose video quality with extra transcoding.
PS: this question can have many answer because out of there probably exists many softwares.. tease me with lot of things please :D I would like stuff that can manipulate a lot the audio video and metadata streams but coded possibly.

I think you have to distinguish between tasks that are supposed to happen in preparing videos and others that can or should happen during playout, depending on your usage scenario. Liquidsoap can do some of the things you are looking for, but not all of them and is aimed towards realtime usage... http://liquidsoap.fm/download.html

Generally I would say that all you want to do could be done with a combination of OpenCV, Ffmpeg and liquidsoap.

Need to be more specific about what automation you want.


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Create video with filmstrip effect with Adobe Premiere
I'm a wedding photographer and I'm trying to create a slideshow for my customer. She want a moving filmstrip effect where her image will fill in a 35mm film, and it keeps scrolling. It looks similar to this.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/IeRD6mP5YxA/maxresdefault.jpg
I don't have any clues about how to create this. I have Adobe Premiere but kind of newbie to it. Any clues will be appreciated.
P/s: sorry, my English is bad.

http://www.audiomicro.com/royalty-free-music-blog/2013/01/adobe-premiere-pro-filmstrip-animation-and-more/

Tks. I got a tutorial from Premiere forum, similar to this one. I need to add "film" border to all images I want to appear in filmstrip animation.

Buy a ready-made template and use After Effects (you're never going to get a clean pro look with Premiere). Include the price of the template to your fee (you'll be able to use the template again for future projects).

Essentially what you are trying to do is create a mask with the film strip.
If you are seeing (lets say) 3 frames, then you would duplicate your original image 3 times, and offset each one by one frame. Feel free to cheat more than a frame to get the right look.
Then scale and rotate the images to fit under the film strip.
That is how I would do it.
Other things you might consider doing.
Reducing the frame rate to around 12 frames a second, to make it look more like the old silent movies.
Add dust and scratches effect
Add light leaks effects as well
And add a jitter effect (many ways to do that)
Good Luck

Even though you have suggested that you already have Premiere, I must point out that After Effects is a popular choice for such applications. Wedding videographers often make use of templates created by others to illustrate their videos.
For example, you can make use of this free After Effects template to showcase of your photos:
Youtube link
Through using a template you could simply add your photos in and render the final result, without having to draw or automate anything yourself.

You could use this After Effects Free template to create the effect you mentioned.
https://www.pond5.com/after-effect/1038234/film-strip.html
Just drop your footage/pictures in the template and your project will be complete in no time.
See this video to know how it will look:

Or you can go to videohive.net and chose from hundreds of AE templates :
https://videohive.net/search/filmstrip%20slideshow?as=1&referrer=homepage&type=l&utf8=%E2%9C%93
for example :
https://s3.envato.com/h264-video-previews/14110496-223e-49f8-85cb-907f086a5646/17175254.mp4
If your requirement of filmstrip effect is not so strict I can tell you one free alternative.. Checkout the link as given below from Rocketstock.com, this templates resembles very close to what you are looking but it is not exactly the filmstrip slideshow effect as you want. But it looks very elegant and your client may like it as well. The good thing about it is that it is free and wouldn't cost you a dime.
https://www.rocketstock.com/free-after-effects-templates/fast-slides-free-slideshow-template/
This is how it will look:


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Lightroom-like software for video (categorizing & organizing footage)
I use Lightroom's library system to organize my photos using tags and categories. Now I want to have the same functionality for video footage, especially for extracting and organizing the interesting sections of a clip.
Is there something like that, maybe even as an addon for lightroom?
Cheers,
fabs

I think the keywords your looking for is "media asset management" or "video asset management". Apart from the numerous commercial softwares around, this list of open source alternatives might give you a good overview.
http://www.opensourcedigitalassetmanagement.org


text:
What are supported stream formats for h.265
I wanted to know what are the possible streaming formats for streaming a video using H.265.
Does H.265 support rtsp and rtmp based streaming?
Currently, I am using ffmpeg to live stream the camera feed from my Android phone to the Wowza streaming server.
The following command throws no errors but the streaming does not begin from ffmpeg. I mean the bit rate logs for transfer do not show up.
ffmpeg -f image2pipe -vcodec mjpeg -i - -c -copy -f hevc -vcodec libx265 -f rtsp rtsp://10.31.5.126:1935/app2/myStream

That command isn't well-formed. First, you specify copy, then specify a raw HEVC format with HEVC encoding and then RTSP as an output format.
Try
ffmpeg -f image2pipe -vcodec mjpeg -i - -vcodec libx265 -f rtsp rtsp://10.31.5.126:1935/app2/myStream

why did u remove the "hevc" and the -copy part?

I tried using your command. When I use it I get this output --> http://ideone.com/fAgmuD

First of all, your ffmpeg build does not have x265 or any other HEVC encoder, so nothing will work. I removed copy since you are ingesting a JPEG sequence and want a HEVC stream, so copy makes no sense. -f hevc outputs a raw HEVC stream, which you don't want, but in any case, you are overriding it with a rtsp format flag. But all that is irrelevant. You need ffmpeg with a HEVC encoder like x265.

ok I got the x265 part. Lets say I replace x265 with x264 for now. Will your command work? In fact I replaced the libx265 with libx264. However the transfer does not start

The errors you get "Main.java:1: error: class, interface, or enum expected" and "Main.java:4: error: unclosed character literal" indicate something to do with java, not ffmpeg. Either you are not calling it correctly or some characters need to be escaped or enclosed. Don't know what exactly.

no no @Mulvya that has nothing to do with code. I just used that website to show you the ffmpeg output. Can you tell why this ffmpeg command that you have given is not working. It does not start streaming. I have replaced libx265 with libx264

Paste the full console output.

Let us continue this discussion in chat.


text:
Enter the position for a guide in After Effects numerically
Is there a way to manually type the precise pixel position for a guide, instead of zooming in and dragging it to the correct position?

Updating my answer as this is now possible in CC 2019 onwards:
Create a guide, right click on it and enter a numeric value. Simple!

Sadly, no. I've wished for this many times myself.
Michael Szalapski wrote in a CreativeCow thread,
"At 100% zoom level in the comp viewer, guides move on full pixels, so you can place them on exact pixels right where you want them if you sit them on a null (or solid or whatever). Granted, it doesn't snap, but when I tried it just now, I got it right where I wanted it pretty quickly with a null as a reference. "
That's the best solution I've ever come across. Not what you asked for, I know.

Looks like this will be available in CC 2019:

You can actually right-click the guide and enter in a numerical position, now !

I just write an "O" and align it in the middle with the align tool. Then zoom in and set the guides so there's a perfectly placed cross in the middle of the O. Hope you find this useful.

If you're aiming for the middle, just turn on the screen safe guides - they give you a cross smack bang in the middle of the comp ;)