text:
How much time to calculate for legal advice on a feature film based in Switzerland
We are planning on shooting our first feature film based in Switzerland. As we have never done that or anything near it, especially the publishing side and official documents and contracts, we want to get a legal adviser who can tell us everything we'll need to know.
How many hours do you normally employ an adviser for a feature film?
Our budget is around 100k dollars.

The service you are looking for is Consulting. The best thing to do is to e-mail this question to the public institutions or organizations of Switzerland that promote film Industry, if you are shooting there.
Or any other country that is your homeland.
You can start from here:
https://www.mediadesk.ch/
https://www.swissfilms.ch/


text:
looking for some advise on setting up a sports event livestream with local playback
I have recently been tasked with setting up a live stream for a Karate Tournament.  Never did anything like it before but I'm the organization's technical wiz so its landed on my lap.
I'm looking for some advise on where to start equipment wise.  I have a cropped sensor Nikon d3400 with a 35mm lens.  So looking on advise on whether to use that or to look at a goPro or similar camera.
My other requirement is to have a laptop available that if the referee would like to see a replay of recent footage to determine if there is a foul we can do this without interrupting the live stream.
So really I am looking for advise on the following.

Should I stick with the entry dslr or investing in a sports camera?
Will there be any issues with streaming and also recording for instant playback from the same camera.

I have almost a year to get this setup working so really just looking for a bit of advise so i can get started.

Yes, there will be problems trying to stream the live-image from a dslr. Usually, you would use a multicam-setup for a livestream such as this, including scenes for intermissions, transitions, etc.
Normally, you would use a mixer like the ones from black-magic, here's a link to it. Using it, you would want to feed an sdi signal from the camera into the mixer and send the image from the mixer to a distributer (like a pc or laptop) which will then be able to stream the image.
Unfortunately, you can't just plug a gopro into your pc and press "stream image".

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
How do you keep the silent part of a video?
How can I keep the funny silent part of a video (sniffs, breathing,...)?
I found a solution here, but is there another solution?
I mean: Can I do the same in a video editor?

Welcome to video Stack Exchange. This is an interesting question, and one that I have asked myself in the past!

If you are willing to spend money, check out the third-party Adobe plugin Awkward Pause (click here for demo video).
For a quick and dirty solution, you can try using this command-line tool I made last semester for a class. It is different from carykh's in the practical sense that it does not need to store png sequences of the images. (Therefore it requires less space.)

For your purposes: keep the first_speed = 1.0 and change the second_speed to a very high number, then compile in XCode.

One more question: How do you run it? Do you run it in terminal?

If you have trouble, try the following: 1) Make sure you have ffmpeg installed 2) Make sure ffmpeg is in your PATH 3) Make sure all the file names & directories you use have no spaces 4) If you have problems on windows/linux, try using a mac (the tool should work on anywhere you compile for but I only tested it on mac.) I will update the readme with this info. :)

@FrodóZsákos Yes. Once you have a compiled executable file, put it in a folder with the input video. Then you can run it from terminal in that directory with ./vidsum inputvideoname.mp4 outputvideoname.mp4

When I try to run ffmpeg this happens: ffmpeg: command not found can you help me with this one please?

@FrodóZsákos it sounds like either you don't have ffmpeg installed or it's not in your PATH. please follow the instructions in my other comment on this thread.

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


text:
Comparing PSNR/SSIM of two videos with different fps/bit-depth
I have a 720p, 30 fps, 8-bit source video. I'm downscaling it to 480p, and I want to measure quality using PSNR/SSIM under two scenarios:

Keeping crf/speed settings same, I want to encode in 8-bit(yuv420p) and 10-bit(yuv420p10le). I want to measure SSIM/PSNR using ffmpeg's filter. Now normally I'd do something like
ffmpeg -i reference.mkv -i distorted.8bit.mkv/distorted.10bit.mkv -lavfi "ssim" -f null -

where reference.mkv is 480p lossless ffv1 from the same source. Now the problem here is, that reference.mkv is 8-bit but one of the two distorted videos is 10-bit. Can we compare a 10-bit distorted video with an 8-bit reference?
I create two videos, with the same crf/speed/bit-depth settings. The first has the same fps as the source (30 fps). The second is downsampled to 18 fps. I want to measure the deterioration in quality (if any) caused purely by downsampling the fps.
Again, the problem here will be that the reference lossless ffv1 is 30 fps, but one of the distorted videos is 18 fps. How do we compare objective metrics for two videos that differ in frame-rates?

PSNR and SSIM are image quality metrics. Their use on videos involves calculating the metric for each pair of frames and then applying some aggregating operation to the series of frame scores, typically the arithmetic mean. What this means is both inputs must have same frame count with each encoded frame paired with its source frame.  So, deterioration of subjective perception caused by downsampling the fps isn't measured. For a valid and useful comparison, your best bet is to downsample the source to the same FPS using the same methods as used on the distorted video before carrying out the comparison.
As for the bit depth, both operands must have the same pixel format of which bit depth is one factor. I would recommend converting both inputs to the higher bit depth. This will allow you to preserve the details in the distorted input if you applied any filters to it after the bit depth increase.


text:
Strange gaps in teleprompter pricing
I need a teleprompter for my video production.
A fast googling gives me teleprompters of very diverse prices.
How can one product have that huge price span?
Which should I use as a "normal" youtuber with only the aim of looking into the camera all the time?
scandinavian photo
https://www.scandinavianphoto.se/video-dronare/tvvideoproduktion/teleprompter
3 products: 7590, 5750 and 42490 SEK (10 SEK is approx 1 USD)
film city
https://www.proaim.be/products/filmcity-easy-teleprompter?variant=22880703512657&gclid=CjwKCAiAsIDxBRAsEiwAV76N88GatMOINnM6lHLp99MTZMQLusZXdG-5Z4t2ZHftsB4SNzWD_5X1KxoCV-UQAvD_BwE
1 product: 182 euro, is almost like USD
leeventi
http://leeventi-teleprompter.com/product/teleprompter-by-leeventi
1 product: 49 euro, like USD

Like many products, teleprompters vary in price for a number of reasons. First, it helps to understand how a prompter works. A beam splitter, basically a two way mirror, is positioned between the camera lens and the speaker. It allows the light from the scene to reach the camera while the reflection of the display device, positioned below the beam splitter, is seen by the speaker.
In no particular order, some of the factors that influence the price are:

The quality of the beam splitter. Higher quality glass means less light loss to the camera.
The size of the beam splitter. Bigger glass equals bigger text.
The mounting system. How do the glass, camera, and display all attach to each other. Is it flimsy and the speaker will see the text bounce around with the slightest movement of the system? Will a light breeze shake the camera?
The display device. Do you have to supply your own tablet? Is it a high quality display to connect to a computer?
Software. Is prompter software included or do you need to supply your own?
Accessories. Tally and cue lights, confidence/feedback monitors, playback controllers are all options for various situations.


text:
Editing Daniel2 Cinegy out of pendrive USB3, possible?
Does a USB3.0 pen/thumb drive have enough speed to handle editing in Premiere Pro Daniel2 codecs ?

It depends on the USB flash drive, for example some have > 100 MB/s R/W capability and would be similar to working with a traditional HDD. However USB flash drives have chips which are not meant for constant use and lots of writing, and they don't have wear leveling like a good SSD. This means that the flash drive will go bad sooner and you will lose your data when it does.
I recommend using a portable SSD to work with your video projects. For example a Samsung T5 series.

Thank you, you have right. External drive will be better


text:
What are the most mergeable codecs? What is the best codecs for intermediate videos?
I want to compose many videos from frames and mp3 files then join them together using FFMPEG.
[frames+mp3] -> [Intermediate videos] -> [Joined intermediate videos]

Using mp4 with aac introduces noticeable audio gaps between videos when I use the concat protocol.
What are the best audio and video codes to be used for the intermediate videos? can this be done in a better way?
I'm a beginner in multimedia. Thanks a lot.

Mp4 with aac audio and h.264 video (mp4 isn't a codec as such, it's a container) isn't a good intermediate format. It is lossy, and the video is generally not all I-frame (meaning that to display a frame it references previous and following frames). h.264/aac/mp4 are great for delivery because they efficiently pack a lot of perceptual quality into a small file.
You're better off using an all-i-frame codec. Notable examples are Apple ProRes, Avid DNxHD and Cineform. These are all lossy, but minimally so. You can also use a lossless codec, like FFV1, but the speed and storage this requires might make it unworkable. Similarly you're best off using PCM (uncompressed) for your audio.
I'm not sure if that is going to affect the problem of the gaps. That might be an artefact of the way the video and audio are multiplexed.

For the purposes of concat via streamcopy, video codec doesn't really matter, as long as all files have the same codec properties. For audio, it is usually needed to have codecs without priming or remainder samples, so PCM will do. As will FLAC.

Thank you Gyan FLAC saved the day. Just if anyone would ever need this, I converted mp3 -> pcm then wrote some code to remove the zeros at the begning of the PCM files, then converted the PCM to FLAC and used it (and applied a lowpass filter at 22k and concated everything) then it worked.
(I needed FLAC because I use ffprobe to get audio duration and I didn't want to compute it after removing the extra samples)


text:
How can I remove red dot lens flare from VR footage - Premiere Pro / After Effects
I am in the process of doing post-production work for some footage filmed on an insta360 pro 2. In a great deal of these videos there are these annoying red dots from lens flare that can bee seen in this image on the right and left.

I have tried to look up what to do about something like this but found only information on removing dust particles in AE.
Can anyone point me in the right direction on how to deal with this, is it something that I as an amateur would be able to do or are there extensions for this?
I have AE and I am willing to put in the work of learning how to deal with it, but I simply cant find any good information on this.
thanks kindly.

I would try using clone stamp or content aware fill to replace them.
You may need to track them first using a single point motion tracker, apply the track to a null, then parent your clone to that null.
Or go nuts and whack a great big lens flare on there instead :)

hi @tomh Thank you so much for answering. I have started down the process of doing as you said. I am an amateur but I like a challenge, and love learning this stuff. I found this great video that basically describes exactly what I need to do here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-ew-iAIqpk). However I am having hard time tracking the red dot, instead of the background. Any input?

I think it will be a very difficult thing to track because trackers usually look for areas of high contrast, and the background may be higher contrast than the lens flare. You may end up tracking them manually with a null object, then using the position of the null to move the clone around.

Thanks @tomh I have updated my post with a guide to how I did it. thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

Glad it helped. I think you should answer your own question as a separate answer - stack exchange allows you to do that- and keep the question as a question, so it’s easy for others to find.

After getting some inspiration from the anders below I took some hours to learn how to possibly fix this issue. Although I am an amateur I hope that my experience can help others who stumble into this and know very little.
I use Adobe premiere Pro and I also have Adobe After Effects. I used both programs to establish a workflow that can do a suprisingly good job at fixing this.

In Premiere identify which sections of the video have the red dot issues that you wish to correct and use the razor tool to cut directly before the issue start and directly after.
Right-click the newly created section and select 'Replace With After Effects Composition' - AE will open with this section ready to work with. (If it fails make sure you have AE installed if it still fails uninstall both applications, log out of adobe cloud, reboot and reinstall both - worked for me)
Now press 'Q' or select the Rectangle or Ellipse tool, which fits better.
Draw a shape around the flare leaving a bit of space around it (we will need some pixels around it later)
Set your newly created Mask to Subtract and click the little stopwatch on the 'Mask path' Layer, this will auto create keyframes.

Now move through your footage making sure you place your Mask object over the flare for the entire duration. (Sadly auto-track seems to fail at this task)
Once you've done this your ready to use Window => Content Aware Fill. The settings of which really depend on the footage you are using and the power of your machine. (for reference I have a 64 core cpu, 130 GB RAM and an RTX 3080ti, yet because I am working with 8k footage I could only set 'Alpha Expansion' to 5 and I made sure to make my 'Work space' no more than 2-3 seconds at a time)
To Set your work space move to the starting frame and press 'B' and then move as far along as you think you can get away with and press 'N'.
Make sure 'Fill Method' is set to 'Object' and 'Range' is set to 'Workspace' and press 'Generate Fill layer'
It will now analyze and then render and fix all frames in that workspace timeline. Now move to the first frame after the Workspace, where you still can see your Mask and Press 'B', this should set a new Workspace of the same size starting from that frame.
Press 'Generate Fill layer'. Rinse repeat * n.
When you're done make sure your work is saved and close After effects.
Jump back into Premiere pro and you're done. your content is now fixed.

Hope this helps.
Also check out this [Video][3] which goes through the steps in a really good way, but simply uses the Track motion option which I couldnt use in my case.
Here is one frame of the thousands I managed to fix making 13 seconds of footage completely perfect.


text:
What is this effect called and where can I find a tutorial about it and reproduce it today?
So, I am a complete beginner in davinci resolve and the video editing world, I wonder how to create this amazing looking image effect:

It is the effect in the background btw.
Does anybody know what it is called and how to make it with davinci resolve 17?

Welcome! The sample you posted is not available in the US. Can you share another sample or describe the effect?

Try this one: https://youtube.com/shorts/Bk4PyW8-DqA?feature=share

The video you link to is unavailable in the UK, but viewable using the Tor browser.
It's a series of motion blurred zoom-outs animated together, probably made using Adobe After Effects (eg this tutorial).
This page explains how to do motion blur transitions using Resolve and Fusion combined (Fusion comes as part of Resolve and is DaVinci's animation package, a bit like After Effects).
https://beginnersapproach.com/davinci-resolve-add-motion-blur/


text:
Fixing ISO value of each frame of a recorded AVI video
As the ISO value is dynamic in video recording, is there a way to somehow force the camera to record the whole video in one fixed ISO ?
Camera: Nikon D3s

You can just turn off the AUTO ISO feature and set the ISO manually. This way it won't change throughout your recording, and this will also produce more consistent lighting, unless the lighting conditions change (i.e. your scene involves turning the lights on/off, opening/closing a window or something like that). Instructions on how to do that can be found in your camera's manual.
A quick google search yielded the following result:

By default the D3s won't give you much control of video capture and you'll have to unlock the manual video control by using a secret method. Don't worry, nothing will happen to your $5,000+ camera!
All you have to do is set your Live View-setting to "Tripod Mode", enter Live View using the Lv-button on the back of the camera and then press the OK-button on the left side of the LCD. That's it. You've now gained full manual control of video on your D3s. Congratulations!

Source
And here's an excerpt from a more extensive guide to the camera's shooting menu:

ISO sensitivity settings
ISO sensitivity
This duplicates the ISO button. I use ISO 200.
ISO sensitivity auto control
This is where we set the AUTO ISO feature ON or OFF. Auto ISO magically bumps up the ISO as the light gets weaker, saving you a lot of time since you no longer need to watch your lighting or shutter speeds. Set this and just shoot, from daylight to moonlight.

Source

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


text:
How can I demux avi?
I want to demux the audio from avi files, so that the files are lossless. I tried both Yamb and Ffmpeg. Both produce files less than 1 MB (for a video of 80 MB), which are unplayable through VLC. I tried avidemux, and it says it can't export in copy mode.

Paste the console output of the ffmpeg command you ran.

Here's the output: http://pastebin.com/n0E2e07P

Your audio is PCM, but you're trying to streamcopy to AAC, which won't work.
To extract the audio to WAV, use
ffmpeg -i DSCN5008.AVI -acodec copy -y a.wav

To transcode the audio to AAC, use
ffmpeg -i DSCN5008.AVI -acodec aac -y a.aac

Note that AAC isn't lossless. But FLAC is a lossless and compressed codec.
ffmpeg -i DSCN5008.AVI -acodec flac -y a.flac

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


text:
Resize, crop and SBS duplicate with ffmpeg
As I have no previous knowledge of video editing, I'm still struggling to get ffmpeg to work as I need.
I need to resize a video of any size and any aspect ratio to height a of 960px, then crop both sides to get a square of 960x960 where the original image would be centered. And now the tricky part for me, I need to duplicate this square, so they would be side by side as single output video of 1920 x 960 pixels.
It's not supposed to be 3D, only cardboard friendly.

Use
ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -filter_complex \
       "[0]scale=iw*sar:ih,setsar=1,scale=-1:960,crop=960:960,split[left][right]; \
        [left][right]hstack[sbs]"  -map "[sbs]" -map 0:a? out.mp4

Perfect. Thank you. You might want to fix the typo though. You missed a '=' after scale command.


text:
Is there a mathematical equation to compute the bitrate of a Cisco H.264 stream?
I'm working on adaptive streaming for video. As I'm using a Cisco Open H.264 Encoder, I'm testing multiple configurations for the encoder. A configuration consists in a several of parameters (bps, fps, slice_mode, usage_type, rateconol_mode, keyframeInterval). I also have the width and height of the image to encode.
Is there a mathematical equation to get fps from the bps and vice versa in order to apply the best fps value to be adequate with the bps and the opposite.

No, because it's content dependent. Video with high motion contains more information than a nearly still scene does. Hence it takes more bits to encode.

I'd say that this statement is technically wrong, but practically accurate. There is a mathematical equation that will answer the OPs question, but it just the math at the heart of the encoder.

Yeah, I am familiar with the work of Claude Shannon. But practically, there is no way to find the mathematical "best fps" without trial and error/binary search.


text:
Extracting individual video fields
I need to extract all video fields of an interlaced file as individual images.
Is it possible to do this (using ffmpeg or other tools for Windows)?

What's the source format?

@Mulvya , DV PAL 720x576i

Using ffmpeg,
ffmpeg -i video.avi -vf field=top top%d.png

and
ffmpeg -i video.avi -vf field=bottom bottom%d.png


text:
Camcorder vs. not a camcorder and separate audio and video recording
I'm not even a beginner yet - I've never owned a video camera in my life.
However, I want to buy one, set it up on a tripod and use a remote control to film myself talking about various topics, then put the videos on my websites.
I learned that a camcorder is a portable video camera that records both visual and audio. So my question is simple: What do you call a NON-PORTABLE video camera that records visual and audio both? (I always assumed video cameras recorded both visual and audio by default.)
My videos will all include soundtracks, so I either need a video camera that does both, or I could attach a microphone to my Mac and record an audio track at the same time that I'm recording a visual with my video camera.
In fact, that's another question I have: Would there be any advantages to recording a visual and audio separately (but simultaneously), using a video camera and an audio recorder built into my laptop? (Or should I post that as a separate question?)

Terminology
In theory, a camcorder is a video camera that also records video. A long time ago, this was an important distinction, since movie cameras (which are analog and record to film) and other now somewhat obsolete cameras didn't have inbuilt recording capabilites.
(DISCLAIMER: opinionated paragraph ahead!) This distinction doesn't really matter anymore, since most video cameras are camcorders anyway, and/or can record to film and on a digital storage simultaneously (on a professional level). I have really seen the term 'camcorder' used more often to distinguish inexpensive consumer-level cameras from full-fledged, professional video cameras. Since the technology of those aren't fundamentally different (any more), this terminology has lost much of it's meaning.

I learned that a camcorder is a portable video camera that records both visual and audio

I don't know where you heard this, but I don't think that's correct. At least I have never seen it used in that way, but then again, people are mixing up the terminology all the time and especially terms like that that have to some extent lost their original meaning get used in all kinds of contexts and meanings.
Most cameras will record both audio and video. Prosumer-level and some consumer-level cameras will both have an inbuilt microphone as well as an audio jack for external ones. I'm not sure about high-end professional cameras having inbuilt microphones, but at that level you really only use external microphones, since the internal ones have some shortcomings (see External vs. internal microphones).

What do you call a NON-PORTABLE video camera that records visual and audio both?

A video camera. Or call it whatever you like, it doesn't really matter.
External vs. internal microphones
As mentioned, most cameras on a prosumer-level (which seems to be the right type of camera for your purpose) will have an inbuilt microphone and an audio jack to record with an external microphone. I would definitely recommend you use a good microphone. So many Youtube channels are unwatchable because of their terrible audio quality. And while even low-cost cameras have pretty good video quality nowadays, the audio quality is usually very poor.
Internal mics suffer from some problems. For instance, they are by design built in to the camera, so in most cases they won't be close to the source of the sound. Combine that with the fact that they are usually omnidirectional (i.e. they record sound from every direction) and they are generally not of high quality and you will get noisy, unclear audio with much reverb and ambient noise. Poor sound quality is one of the first things that people will notice about your video, and at least for me it's a reason to quit your video and never come back.
Your questions sounds like you plan on recording your videos at home. In that case, I would recommend a solid desktop microphone (that is one that has it's own stand). Depending on what microphone and camera you get, you might be able to plug it into the camera and use it as an external mic for your video recording, but you will probably have to connect it to a computer and record your audio from there. While editing, you can use the wave form of the camera's audio or automatic matching to match your external audio recording to your video.

This is an image of a non-portable video camera:

As @MoritzLost explains above, the terminology is very fluid and somewhat irrelevant.  The Panasonic video camera pictured here becomes a camcorder when the recording module is attached (as shown).

I think that is a portable camera, though it isn't a camcoder in that configuration. The lens it has doesn't make it practical to hand hold, but it can be easily moved from location to location. A better example of of a non-portable camera would be a studio/OB, like the Sony HDC-1000 or the older tube cameras like the approx. 300 lb. RCA TK-41C.

"El Hubble". I like it.


text:
What is the camera technique use in desiigner - Panda vidéo?
What is the name of the technique and how do you rig a camera so that it follows the actor's face from the front, like in the two videos below. I would describe it as a "front tracking follow" shot.

desiigner - Panda (from 00:23)
JME - 96 Fuckries (from beginning)

Cheers

Can you be more specific? Which videos? This one and this one? Which techniques do you mean? Color techniques? Camera techniques?

@user1118321 Yes the Camera Technique... How do they achieve this Frontend Camera Follow?

It made with body camera rig.

Here is tutorial, hot to do it yourself, but you will need some adjustments to face it from front.
Or if you don't need hands in the shot, you can use your tripod, how shown in this tutorial (careful, bad audio)

Thank you! But the first tutorial is not really for DSLR purposes isnt?

It depends on weight of your DSLR, and on shooting conditions... My DSLR Lumix G6 will probably hold well in this rig. But you can make more rigid rig with same materials, if you know, what you doing.

It is DIY. You always can buy some professional gear, if you desire https://www.google.com/search?q=body%20camera%20rig&oq=body%20camera%20rig&aqs=chrome..69i57.343j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#q=body+camera+rig&tbm=shop


text:
After Effects CC Audio Playback not working
So I've been having this problem with my After Effects CC recently and it's actually cheesing my right off. I need to edit a frame by frame storyboard animatic and I can't edit to the sound because the sound refuses to playback. I've tried everything, there is no ''RAM PREVIEW'' button in the new version of AE and the period button simply resizes the window now. What do I need to do to make this work?

So, it turns out that I had to change my Audio Hardware output because my partner was editing a video and using his gaming chair as the output, I was at uni and didn't have it connected up, didn't realise AE has to have its audio output set up manually!

If you're on a machine with a number pad, then by default num-pad 0 is the ram preview button. If you're on a laptop with no num-pad, then try crtl0.
If you look in the Window menu you'll find a Previews panel that will let you set the keyboard shortcuts and their behaviours. More if you want to RTFM here.

I have figured it out, but just to note I did all of that anyway. Used ever shortcut there was. Turns out, my speakers were not selected under Audio Hardware outputs....

Try checking the "cache before playback" checkbox.  It is on the right hand side in the first screen shot near the playback controls (in the panel highlighted in blue.)  That looks like it should be the same as RAM preview.

No clue where that check box is!

It is right in your screen shot, on the right side in the box that is highlighted in blue.


text:
Using a creative commons image in a video
I will create a video and publish it on YouTube. A segment of the video is a voice-over slideshow-like sequence of images. (I will zoom some images, also some "slides" may be a combination of multiple images.) Some of these images are under a CC-BY-SA license.
Is such video a derivative work of the images? If the answer is yes, then how one could include images in a video without making it a derivative work?
Note: It seems that any inclusion of music in a video makes the video a derivative work of the music. But for images, I couldn't find what the consensus is.

Is such video a derivate work of the images?

Yes.

If the answer is yes, then how one could include images in a video without making it a derivate work?

You can't. At least not if the images are distributed under a CC-licence. Even if it's just one image (or song), you have to follow the ShareAlike clause. Also, if you use multiple works by other artists (regardless of what it is, i.e. images, songs, video snippets ...) that are licenced under different CC licences that include the ShareAlike clause, you can't publish your video at all without violating the licencing terms of at least one of those works. See the remix chart here for more information on how material licenced under different licences can be used together for derivate works.


text:
How can I make a video from pictures?
How can I make a video from a sequence of still pictures in PNG format? Something like an animated GIF, just in full-color quality video format.
I'm looking for an Open Source solution for windows.
Thank you very much.

free (as in freedom) is more important than open source and is not the same as open source. not all open source software is free as in freedom.

You can use ffmpeg, a free command-line tool, for this.
Syntax is
ffmpeg -framerate 25 -i img%04d.png video.mp4

where img%04d.png is the pattern mask for a list of image files named
img0001.png
img0002.png
img0003.png
...

don't forget to specify a sane video codec and parameters. defaults are rarely what's appropriate.

For MP4/MKV, defaults are decent. They are horrible for MPEG-PS or WebM output.


text:
Generating numbers counting up with fix poisition for units
In After Effects, I am trying to programmatically generate numbers that count up. But when the numbers start counting up, it is pushing the units to the right.
How I can make units position fixed (right aligned)?
Here is the code I'm using:
startT = 0;
endT = 8;
beginVal = 143;
endVal = 50143;
t =Math.round(linear(time,startT,endT,beginVal,endVal));
t += "";
t.replace(/(\d)(?=(\d\d\d)+(?!\d))/g, "$1 ");

Not sure if this is what you mean, but can't you just set your text object to Align right in the Paragraph tab?  So all the text is right aligned.  That way the units won't jump around.


text:
A question about VHS and SVHS
I have this situation:
I have two VCRs, one is a simple LG VHS VCR. It is one of the latest VCRs, with 4 heads and is standard (composite, not S-Video output). The quality is really poor.
The other VCR is Mitshubishi MD-3000 SVHS medical VCR. It was bought new. The quality is fine and sharp when playing SVHS tapes, but during VHS playback. I lost a lot of frames. I have only old vhs tapes and some of them really old. I get strange blue and red pictures.
The question is, if I transfer from VHS playing from the LG to SVHS  recording on the Misthubishi, will i get a good quality recording and can I transfer to my video capture card? Or is this only a waste of time?

You can't improve the quality of a bad recording. Especially if it is because the tape stock is flaking off oxide or is stretched, both of which are common problems with older tape stock. No matter what tape format you transfer it to, it will likely just get worse.
You might get about the same quality by digitizing with your capture card. However, you will likely need to use a fairly high bit rate, because analog artifacts have a tendency to cause low bit rate compression to induce even worse digital artifacts. If you use a low bit rate, expect the quality to worsen when you digitize it.

I'm interested in the point about analogue artefacts causing digital artefacts, could you explain or give a link? Thanks.

In my experience, drop outs and tearing tend to worsen macro blocking. They aren't things the motion estimators handle well.

How would you determine the right bitrate to use?

@Prometheus trial and error. But you don't want to do too many trials or you risk ruining your tapes or heads before you actually get the material encoded.

@MichaelLiebman But how would you even know where to start? Pluck a number out of thin air, or is there a reasonable ballpark figure for VHS?

@Prometheus There are a lot of factors that go into choosing the right bit rate for a workflow. What codec? What are you going to do with the encoded material? What is your target audience/device? What is your budget? There are many more questions that drive the answer. I'd suggest asking a new question with specifics if you need more help.

@MichaelLiebman I may just do that when I get to that stage. In the meantime I asked a question over here, before I remembered this stack site existed, so if you can help with that it would be much appreciated.


text:
Add border to video, maintaing aspect ratio, and insert subtitles in the border
I have an MKV wrapped 1920x800 video and a sidecar .srt subtitle file. I want to convert the video to 1920 x 1080 and add black border on top and bottom while keeping the original aspect ratio. I also want to insert the subtitles on the black border.
I have an idea on how to insert the subtitles, but I'm not sure how to add the border. I'd appreciate any suggestions on how to do this all in one pass so that I lose at little quality as possible.

What video editing tools are you using.  This is very easily done with Adobe Premiere Pro, Davinci Resolve, Final Cut Pro X, and even Blender.

You can use FFmpeg, a free command line tool to do this:
ffmpeg -i input.mkv -vf pad=1920:1080:0:140,subtitles=filename.srt -crf 20 -c:a copy out.mkv

The subtitles filter accepts ASS styling parameters, such as font size and margins.


text:
Do a sort of HEAC - High Efficiency Audio Codec exists?
As HEVC - High Efficiency Video Codec (h265) can be considered a a sort of upgrade of AVC - Advanced Video Codec (h264), is there a similar "upgraded" audio codec compared to AAC - Advanced Audio Codec? Specifically, I'm thinking of a codec that supports 3D audio and higher compression ratios.
Thanks for satisfying my curiosity!

I think HE-AAC fits that bill.

High-Efficiency Advanced Audio Coding (HE-AAC) is an audio coding
  format for lossy data compression of digital audio defined as an
  MPEG-4 Audio profile in ISO/IEC 14496-3. It is an extension of Low
  Complexity AAC (AAC LC) optimized for low-bitrate applications such as
  streaming audio. HE-AAC version 1 profile (HE-AAC v1) uses spectral
  band replication (SBR) to enhance the compression efficiency in the
  frequency domain. HE-AAC version 2 profile (HE-AAC v2) couples SBR
  with Parametric Stereo (PS) to enhance the compression efficiency of
  stereo signals. It is a standardized and improved version of the
  AACplus codec.

As does Opus.

Opus is a lossy audio coding format developed by the Xiph.Org
  Foundation and standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force,
  designed to efficiently code speech and general audio in a single
  format, while remaining low-latency enough for real-time interactive
  communication and low-complexity enough for low end ARM3
  processors.[3][4] Opus replaces both Vorbis and Speex for new
  applications, and several blind listening tests have ranked it higher
  quality than any other standard audio format at any given bitrate
  until transparency is reached, including MP3, AAC, and HE-AAC.

You can use FFmpeg with the right libraries to encode H.265/HE-AAC version 2, this is the command I use for that kind of encoding:

ffmpeg \
-i input.mp4 \
-c:v libx265 \
-preset medium \
-x265-params crf=28 \
-ar 48000 \
-ac 2 \
-c:a libfdk_aac \
-profile:a aac_he_v2 \
-b:a 64k \
-strict experimental \
output.mp4

I have a cheat sheet for FFmpeg here:
https://github.com/rodrigopolo/cheatsheets/blob/master/ffmpeg.md


text:
Color correction/grading then editing in Premiere
I'm trying to incorporate color correction/grading into my Adobe Premiere CC workflow. I have an x-rite color checker, and have had some success calibrating in Davinci Resolve Lite, but I don't want to render everything in Resolve, just to have to rerender/edit in Premiere. Is it possible to simply output the calibration information (Looks & LUTS?) created from the color matching into Premiere so it's just another effect being rendered on my clips?
If not, is there a way to use Adobe Speedgrade CC to match the colors from the x-rite color checker and then send it back into Premiere without having to render all the clips before other editing?
I guess the final option would be to edit and render in Premiere and then use Davinci Resolve as a post-processing calibration step and rerender afterwards, but this seems like it wouldn't be as convenient and would be very time consuming.

In turns out all I had to do was grade in DaVinci Resolve and right click on the graded clip's thumbnail in the color environment and select Generate 3D LUT (CUBE).

Then in Adobe Premiere CC add the Lutemtri effect to an adjustment layer, expand basic correction, Browse for Input LUT.


text:
How to convert an MP3 file to MIDI on Windows?
How can I convert an MP3 file to MIDI on Windows?  Since MP3 is not losssless, is it possible to get MIDI out of a MP3 file?

I don't think lossless or not has anything to do with recognizing notes to make a midi approximation.  As long as compression artifacts don't completely distort things.

There are several tools out there. The free but rather dated AmazingMIDI which takes in .wav files and generates the corresponding MIDI. You can convert to .wav from .mp3 using Audacity or ffmpeg.
Then there are a few commercial products such as AthTek DigiBand, WidiSoft, and others.
Note that figuring the tune from the recording can be done only as an approximation, and the resulting accuracy depends on the sound profile of the audio content. So don't expect a 100% accuracy, you'll have to try several tools and find the one that yields the better result for your specific case.

That is not possible because MIDI is not an audio file format. It's a description on how to create music. Think of a midi file as a sheet music for a piece of music, whereas an mp3 would be a recording of someone playing the piece. So in order to create a midi file from audio recordings, you'd need some kind of score recognition program, which - to my knowledge - doesn't exist. A quick google search brought up a website and some software claiming to do that, but I wouldn't trust any of them. You can try it if you really want to, but even if they work at all the results will most likely be terrible.
If you need a midi file for a given piece of music, try to find the original score / sheet music! It's quite easy to create a midi version if you have the sheets.

The reason I needed this was that I couldn't find the music score/sheet but I could find an MP3 or MP4 file of the music.

Why do you need that anyway? An alternative would be to ask someone with music production experience or someone who plays an instrument for help. Many of those will be able to transcribe the song manually, at least if it doesnt have to many layers of sound ...


text:
Combining multiple commands to render out different formats, while also resyncing the original file, and not have to render that one out first
After recording a live show, there are several tasks I need to do before I can render out the video file to different formats. I need to trim the file, and then resync the audio as well. After this I render the video file out to WAV, MP3 and MP4. I created a script like the one below (omitting the command for mp3, as this is just an example).
I'm obviously not very well versed in ffmpeg commands. The way this script works I first create a trimmed version, and then a second version that has the audio synced, before it finally does the encoding to other formats. Since I often have to do several massive files, I run into serious disk space problems with all the intermediary files being rendered out first.
Is there a way to combine the trim and resync command into one, so I can render out a trimmed and resynced master file?

ffmpeg -i ORIGINAL_TRIM.mxf -itsoffset 0.200 -i ORIGINAL_TRIM.mxf -map 0:v -map 1:a -c copy ORIGINAL_RESYNC.mxf

ffmpeg -i ORIGINAL_RESYNC.mxf -vn ORIGINAL.wav

ffmpeg -i ORIGINAL_RESYNC.mxf -c:v libx264 -preset slow -crf 22 -c:a aac ORIGINAL.mp4

Pause

As shown below,
ffmpeg -ss 00:01:00 -to 00:45:00 -i ORIGINAL.mxf
       -ss 00:01:00 -to 00:45:00 -itsoffset 0.200 -i ORIGINAL.mxf
       -map 0:v -map 1:a -c:v libx264 -preset slow -crf 22 -c:a aac ORIGINAL.mp4
       -map 1:a -vn ORIGINAL.wav

This is great! Thanks so much! One other thing though. How do I also keep a master recording (the mxf in this case) that is resynced? In this answer the original is encoded to different formats like I asked, and to see the syntax is great, but I also need a version that is not re-encoded, just with the audio corrected.

Actually. I have been trying to use the code a few times but the result is error notifications. I can't post it here as it has too many characters to post.


text:
Extend lower thirds title
I am quite new to premiere pro. I started creating own lower thirds for Interview questions, but then used a template I found online (since it looks much better). https://mixkit.co/free-premiere-pro-templates/lower-third-in-a-text-box-280/
I was able to customize the template for my needs, but could´t change the length. So the questions fly in, stay there for very short time, and fly back. Does anyone know, how I can make them stay longer, without changing the speed of moving in and out? Couldn't find any keyframes as well. Help is much appreciated.


text:
Keeping child object still while parent is moving in AE
In After Effects, there's lots of times I've used the Parent feature (e.g., limbs of a body). However, I've run into an issue several times where I'd like the child layer to be still while the parent continues to move, and I sure hope there's an easier way to do that than by eye.
For example, say an animated character is landing on the ground. Once hitting the ground, their feet (terminal child layer) are stationary, but their body (topmost parent layer) keeps moving down for a moment. I've included this example as a gif below.
I can handle this by eye, or mathematically (manually keeping track of the arithmetic to try to keep the foot mostly still), but that's pretty tedious and is hard to edit later if things need to change. I'm hoping I'm missing a feature I don't know about.
To be clear, it would be really nice to maintain the parent-child relationship between layers in a solution to this issue if at all possible. Thanks!

There isn't really an in-built way to do this in AE. However, getting the feet to stick isn't too difficult to do with expressions, which I'd be happy to help you with. But, since you said that this is something that has come up several times for you, I'd suggest teaching yourself character rigging. There are plenty of tutorials online and free extensions, such as the amazing 'Duik Bassel'. https://rxlaboratory.org/tools/duik/

Getting the knees to bend through expressions is also doable, but much trickier than getting the feet to stick.

What you're describing is inverse kinematics, or IK. Tools like DUIK (free) do this for you.

Thanks very much to you both, I will start learning DUIK, it seems very useful. Also @Clif, thanks for the tip to look into expressions. I imagine something like this will get me started, yeah? Or do you recommend another resource?

That really depends on how you prefer to learn. I prefer video, so YouTube is my go-to. Just type in 'After Effects Expressions' and you should find plenty of resources. If you are serious about learning after effects, expressions will be a great tool for solving problems, like this, that regularly arise. You should also start to keep a text file handy where you can enter your regularly used expressions. I also really like watching videos like this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gK1Ejt7qND0) which show you some very useful expressions that I often used during my professional work.


text:
ffmpeg playout rtmp stream continuously when rtmp stream lost for few seconds
I want to create an rtmp player that receives the stream from the server and displays it on the "Decklink mini monitor"
this is my command
ffmpeg -thread_queue_size 32768 -i rtmp://myserver/live/rahim -bufsize 5000k -preset ultrafast -async 1 -vsync -1 -c:a pcm_s16le -ac 2 -ar 48000 -r 50000/1000 -s 1280x720 -pix_fmt uyvy422 -f decklink 'DeckLink Mini Monitor'

Everything is fine
but !!!
ffmpeg can not continue when the stream is disconnected and reconnected for any reason and ffmpeg output is:
[flv @ 0x55b1c4d76d40] DTS 0 < 7258 out of order6.90 bitrate=N/A speed=1.13x
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There's no buffered audio. Audio will misbehave!
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There's no buffered audio. Audio will misbehave!
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There are not enough buffered video frames. Video may misbehave!
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There's no buffered audio. Audio will misbehave!x
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There are not enough buffered video frames. Video may misbehave!
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There's no buffered audio. Audio will misbehave!360 speed=0.506x
    Last message repeated 2 times
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There are not enough buffered video frames. Video may misbehave!
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There's no buffered audio. Audio will misbehave!
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There are not enough buffered video frames. Video may misbehave!
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There's no buffered audio. Audio will misbehave!
    Last message repeated 7 times
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There are not enough buffered video frames. Video may misbehave!
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There's no buffered audio. Audio will misbehave!
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There are not enough buffered video frames. Video may misbehave!
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There's no buffered audio. Audio will misbehave!
    Last message repeated 5 times
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There are not enough buffered video frames. Video may misbehave!
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There's no buffered audio. Audio will misbehave!
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There's no buffered audio. Audio will misbehave!362 speed=0.516x
    Last message repeated 9 times
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There are not enough buffered video frames. Video may misbehave!
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There's no buffered audio. Audio will misbehave!
    Last message repeated 5 times
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There are not enough buffered video frames. Video may misbehave!
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There's no buffered audio. Audio will misbehave!
    Last message repeated 3 times
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There are not enough buffered video frames. Video may misbehave!
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There's no buffered audio. Audio will misbehave!
    Last message repeated 6 times
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There are not enough buffered video frames. Video may misbehave!
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There's no buffered audio. Audio will misbehave!
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There are not enough buffered video frames. Video may misbehave!
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There's no buffered audio. Audio will misbehave!
    Last message repeated 9 times
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There are not enough buffered video frames. Video may misbehave!
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There's no buffered audio. Audio will misbehave!
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There are not enough buffered video frames. Video may misbehave!
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There's no buffered audio. Audio will misbehave!
    Last message repeated 6 times
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There are not enough buffered video frames. Video may misbehave!
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There's no buffered audio. Audio will misbehave!
    Last message repeated 1 times
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There are not enough buffered video frames. Video may misbehave!
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There's no buffered audio. Audio will misbehave!
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There are not enough buffered video frames. Video may misbehave!
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There's no buffered audio. Audio will misbehave!
    Last message repeated 4 times
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There's no buffered audio. Audio will misbehave!362 speed=0.554x
    Last message repeated 2 times
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There are not enough buffered video frames. Video may misbehave!
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There's no buffered audio. Audio will misbehave!
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There are not enough buffered video frames. Video may misbehave!
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There's no buffered audio. Audio will misbehave!
    Last message repeated 7 times
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There are not enough buffered video frames. Video may misbehave!
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There's no buffered audio. Audio will misbehave!
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There are not enough buffered video frames. Video may misbehave!
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There's no buffered audio. Audio will misbehave!
    Last message repeated 6 times
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There are not enough buffered video frames. Video may misbehave!
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There's no buffered audio. Audio will misbehave!
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There's no buffered audio. Audio will misbehave!362 speed=0.564x
    Last message repeated 9 times
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There are not enough buffered video frames. Video may misbehave!
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There's no buffered audio. Audio will misbehave!
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There are not enough buffered video frames. Video may misbehave!
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There's no buffered audio. Audio will misbehave!
    Last message repeated 7 times
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There are not enough buffered video frames. Video may misbehave!
[decklink @ 0x55b1c4d8aec0] There's no buffered audio. Audio will misbehave!
Last message repeated 8 times

Does anyone have a solution

You can create a batch file:
:START
ffmpeg ... <here is your command>
if errorlevel 1 goto START

That code should auto-restart your command if there was any error.


text:
ffmpeg : Convert all mp4 files in a folder into mp3 in a new folder
I want to convert all my mp4 files in a folder into mp3 in a new folder
I've tried something like:
$ffmpeg -i \*.mp4 -vn mp3/\*.mp3

but it didn't work. It involved an infinite loop and my computer didn't respond anymore. Any solution ? Thanks.

for i in *.mp4; do ffmpeg -i "$i" -f mp3 -ab 192k -vn -ar 44100 -ac 2 aud/"${i%.*}.mp3"; done

vn: disable video recording during the conversion.
ar: set audio sampling rate in Hz.
ab: set the audio bitrate.
ac: set the number of audio channels.
-f: format.
aud: name of the audio folder


text:
Can I crop and overlay at same time when useing ffmpeg?
I have two command:
ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -vf crop='1280:720:0:0' -acodec copy croped.mp4
ffmpeg -loop 1 -i 1.jpg -i  croped.mp4 -filter_complex 'overlay=(W-w)/2:(H-h)/2:shortest=1,format=yuv420p' -c:a copy result.mp4

Can these be combined into a single command? If so, how?

I think you meant guys. Anyway, filtergraph uses label to handle one filter after another. In your case, you may try
ffmpeg -y -i vide.ts -i logo.png  -filter_complex "[0:v]crop=1280:720:0:0[crop]; [crop]overlay=(W-w)/2:(H-h)/2[out]" -map [out] -map 0:a crop_overlay.mp4


text:
How to automate video generation out of short video clips (losless selection of highlights, add intro with title, end texts, captions)?
I have a series of video clips that students created for their projects with embedded systems.
I'm seeking for a tool that would allow me to quickly select highlights, add transitions, add title and intro section, end text section, captions on highlights etc...).
As far as I have researched, LosslessCut seems fine to select highlights. Is there any more complete tool or can I then use something else to add captions, music, intro and end sections with custom text for each clip (like project name, description, some photo of schematic, etc...) ?
Thanks in advance for advice, pointers to tools and other sources to learn from,
regards.

Welcome! Once you add titles and transitions, you will need to re-encode. There is no advantage to using a tool that can do lossless editing in that case.

Thanks for comment... But if all clips are of the same format, isn't it possible to concatenate/add segments with text, titles... Anyway, being lossless is not so important, if the tool is automated... I'm willing to wait... Will correct the title...

It doesn't matter what format the clips are. If you want to add titles and transitions that modify the source clips, you have to re-encode. If you only want cuts and you don't put titles over your source clips, then you can probably concatenate.

Hello, thanks for comment... I understand, re-encode is something I need... What are the tools for the job without lossless restricion ?

You can use any video editing software that you are comfortable with. If you need help narrowing the choices down, I'd suggest creating a new question with as many specific requirements as you can identify: free vs. paid, level of automation needed, operating system are all a good start.


text:
can I change ffmpeg crop position at runtime for each frame during stream
I am trying to move an Region of Interest (RoI) around a multi-camera tiled source (which will be too big to encode for smooth viewing), and stream this "live". The RoI is externally determined which is another problem.
Does anyone have an idea how to achieve this? The solutions I have seen so far require pre-determined RoIs, or potentially change the filter parameters using the libzmq library, but I am not sure if that will be performant enough for a per frame stream.
any help much appreciated!

How soon in advance of a frame will you know the RoI?

Gyan, it will be at the same time, I could in theory add a delay to the start of the output stream if that helps matters, and doesn't lead to desyncing


text:
combining filter with copy commands in ffmpeg
I have an ffmpeg command that changes the PTS of several segments of a video file. the problem is that all the segments are being re encoded (instead of COPY), even the segments that retain the same PTS, and the operation is very slow
ffmpeg -i t.mp4 -i y.wav -filter_complex  "[0:v]trim=0.0:60.859,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[v1];[0:v]trim=60.859:64.379,setpts=1.2946875*(PTS-STARTPTS)[v2];[0:v]trim=64.379:70.858,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[v3];[0:v]trim=70.858:72.378,setpts=1.1231231*(PTS-STARTPTS)[v4];[0:v]trim=72.378:,setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[v5];[0:a]atrim=0.0:60.859,asetpts=PTS-STARTPTS[a1];[0:a]atrim=60.859:64.379,asetpts=PTS-STARTPTS,atempo=0.7723871590634805[a2];[0:a]atrim=64.379:70.858,asetpts=PTS-STARTPTS[a3];[0:a]atrim=70.858:72.378,asetpts=PTS-STARTPTS,atempo=0.8903743498820388[a4];[0:a]atrim=72.378:,asetpts=PTS-STARTPTS[a5];[v1][a1][v2][a2][v3][a3][v4][a4][v5][a5]concat=n=5:v=1:a=1" -map 0:v:0 -map 1:a:0 output.mp4

I tried appending -map "[v]" -map "[a]" -c:v copy -c:a copy to the command but i get an error Streamcopy requested for output stream fed from a complex filtergraph. Filtering and streamcopy cannot be used together.
Is there a way to do that task without running a separate ffmpeg command for each segment and then concatenating them at the end?
thanks!

http://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-all.html#concat-1

authors: Баяр Гончикжапов


text:
Unable to find a suitable output format for 'libfdk_aac' libfdk_aac: Invalid argument
I'm trying to run this command in Windows 10. The script ran fine with 2 60mb samples. But now trying to run it on the full video, I'm getting this error: Unable to find a suitable output format for 'libfdk_aac' libfdk_aac: Invalid argument
This is the command I'm using:
ffmpeg -i 300roae.mp4 -pix_fmt yuv420p10le -c:v libx265 -preset ultrafast -crf 28 -x265-params -c:a libfdk_aac -profile:a aac_he -b:a 72k C:\Users\hifim\Videos\300roae.mp4

The error is happening because the -x265-params option is missing the required parameter. Instead of a real parameter to pass to libx265, it is swallowing the audio codec option. See Passing Options in FFmpeg's "H.265/HEVC Video Encoding Guide".

yes i see the mistake now..I had this in there before -x265-params profile=main10. I added it back and its running fine now..Thanks


text:
Run FFMPEG-Kit command with commas and single quotes
I am using FFMPEG-Kit for iOS BUT this issue applies to all releases of FFMPEG-Kit... within my command I run [1:v]format=argb,geq=r='r(X,Y)':a='0.5*alpha(X,Y)'[withOpacitySet] but it does not work, if I run the command without that it runs fine...
Is it the commas? The quotation marks?

Welcome! What "does not work"? Do you get an error? Does it not generate the output you expect? (Also, it looks like you may have posted this question to more than one SE site. That is generally frowned upon.)

Hello @MichaelLiebman the error is not detailed as it generates from the library, mainly, I have come to the safe conclusion that the library will not take that syntax since my terminal does accept it. I did post this same question on StackOverflow, I did not know it was frowned upon, I just wanted to reach more people. If it is against the TOS I have no problem on taking it down. The error is simply Error creating video...... nice... lol. I know the issue is in the line of FFMPEG posted though, as if removed, it runs successfully.

Multiple posts don't violate any policy, they are just considered bad etiquette since the answers don't share across the sites. Your question ends up helping less people in the end. Sorry I don't have any answers on your problem since the library, as you said, really everything clear. ;)


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Putting a png background on h264 encoded mp4 video using ffmpeg
I would like to put a png file as a background to an h264 encoded mp4 video. I am just trying to replace the video's white background with a specific png background. They are both of the same size.
Can this be done using ffmpeg?
I have looked into using ffmpeg -filter_complex overlay but the background ended up covering the whole video. This is the command I tried:
ffmpeg -loop 1 -i background.png -i video.mp4 -filter_complex 'overlay=10:main_h-overlay_h-10:shortest=1’ output.mp4

Welcome! Can you share the full ffmpeg command that you tried? What are you using to decide where to show the foreground and where to show the background? An alpha channel? A chroma or luma key?

Hi thanks for your reply @MichaelLiebman. I used the command below.
ffmpeg -loop 1 -i background.png -i video.mp4 -filter_complex 'overlay=10:main_h-overlay_h-10:shortest=1’ output.mp4
I am not too sure I understand the second part of your question. I am just trying to replace the video's white background with a specific png background.

That means you are trying to do a luma key. There's a filter for that.  I can't tell you specifically how to use it, but maybe that will give you more to search on in case someone else doesn't answer your question.


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Merge Insta360 INSV files into 360 video with ffmpeg 360vr filter
Insta produces 2 video files, from back and front camera. They have .INSV extenstion, but they are acutally mp4 video files. That's how they look:

And expected result is 360 panorama video:

Can I use ffmpeg with 360 filter to get result as above? I mean that filter: https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html#v360
I can use Insta360 studio, but as I'm on Linux, I'm getting some troubles to use it (my video card driver opengl version is too old to run it on Wine). Also, I preffer command line interface for batch convert files.
So, can I use ffmpeg to do that (or any other Linux tool)?


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mpeg-2 422P@H-14 by ffmpeg
I want to convert videos to mpeg2 422P Profile H-14 Layer, (422P@H-14), with the use of ffmpeg.
What arguments would i need to use?
I followed the comments in this forum post to solve my problem. I followed comment 6:

422P@H-14 would be -profile:v 0 -level:v 6

But it did not work.

Can you be more specific? What didn't work? Did you get any error messages? What is the exact, complete ffmpeg command you used? What are the specs of your source?

The argument I used to convert videos to mpeg2 422P Profile H-14 Layer 'ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:v mpeg2video -s 1440*1080 -r 30 -profile:v 0 -level:v 6 output.mp4‘. But it  showd that the format profile is Main in mediainfo.


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routing rtmp ect streams via ffmpeg+python is it possible?
Is it possible to solve this problem using ffmpeg+python or in conjunction with another solution.
I need a server solution, so Vmix, obs, etc are not suitable. (
eg: I have two (and/or more) streams
rtmp://host/live/input_stream_1
rtmp://host address/live/input_stream_2
 etc.

Is it possible to organize "routing" of streams (choosing a priority live-video-stream and applying layers to them according to the logic

The logic of the layers might be like::

There is input_stream_1 - it is default and local - videos from a network folder are packed via ffmpeg and fly to rtmp://host address/live/output_stream_1A (+ overlay layers -ect logos).
It is necessary, when an incoming stream input_stream_2 appears, to replace the content of input_stream_1 with the content of input_stream_2 and send it, and when input_stream_2 stops, going to return input_stream_1 ?
Maybe it will be a combination of ffmpeg (as suggested in this thread and in this thread) and python solutions.


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Edit text while playing a video in Premiere
Something I do to help me organize my timeline is typing out section descriptions, relevant quotes, and other information in text layers over my video. This is the easiest thing to do in Resolve, where you put a text layer over your video and then, in a separate panel, type what you want while you play the video. For a project that I have to edit in Premiere, I have 8 hours of interview to sort through, and I want to be able to type these descriptions in real time.
But it seems like I have two options: type what I want into the horrible text box in the program monitor, or use the Graphics tab in the Captions and Graphics panel, which overwrites everything you write as you write it if the video is playing. Both options require pausing the video, which sounds small but with this much footage that could end up costing me hours. Is there a way I can keep my workflow in Premiere?


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Any way to *list*, not remove, duplicate frames in an an MP4 file?
I can use ffmpeg -mpdecimate to remove duplicate frames in a video file, but is there any way to just list them, using ffmpeg or otherwise?
Ideally I'd get an output saying nothing happens at time x for y frames.

Look at freezedetect filter.


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Error when trying to execute ffmpeg command
I'm just starting with ffmpeg, and i can't get any command to run, they all return
"Unable to find a suitable output format for 'i'
i: Invalid argument"

The command was just ffmpeg i StarWars1977.m4v. Does the input file need too be in somewhere specific, or do I need to copy the file path?
I'm trying to extract frames from a video, but it was giving the same error, so i was trying a simpler test.

Your question needs a little more information. Do you want to extract certain frames or all of them? BTW, it should always be -i instead of i.

certain frames, but i wanted to run the command as a test, because it wasn't working.

Welcome! If you ran the command exactly as you have it in the question, you need a hyphen before the i.  ffmpeg -i StarWars1977.m4v

This will get you one frame at the one minute mark.
ffmpeg -ss 00:01:00 -i "[FilePath]" -frames:v 1 img.png


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ffmpeg - live stream into a browser video tag (localhost only)
I'm building an application, that is basically a video chat, where a user connects using WebRTC with another users (operator) browser, and should be able to talk to a third person. The WebRTC part is already done, and works properly.
The other part - the problematic one - is that the third person, will be recorded by some video equipment, and a stream will be handled to me using ffmpeg. So I need to, somehow stream this into a browser (and then stream it using WebRTC - that part I've got covered).
Since the stream will be handled to me using ffmpeg, it would be best to use ffmpeg, to stream into a browser, but this is the part where it gets tricky. From what I understand, the only protocol I can use is HTTP (as browsers don't support udp or pretty much anything and using flash player is not an option), but it is not clear how.
One way was to use ffserver, but it got deprecated earlier this year, and I'd rather avoid using obsolete software. Another option is to use some other media streaming server, but I'd rather avoid installing anything.
From what I've read ffmpeg should support what I need out of the box, but I'm not sure how to configure it. For now I've got this:
ffmpeg -f video4linux2 -s 640x480 -r 30 -i /dev/video0 -thread_queue_size 512 -ac 1 -f alsa -i pulse -f webm -listen 1 -seekable 0 -multiple_requests 1 http://localhost:8090

...and a HTML video tag to display this.
<video src="http://localhost:8090"></video>

... which almost works with ffmpeg version 2.8.15-0ubuntu0.16.04.1. I get the browser to play my video, but only after recording stops. It seems, that the browser sees my ffmpeg output as a file and tries to download it, before it starts playing.
This same command, run with ffmpeg version 4.1 gives me errors:
[vp8_v4l2m2m @ 0x3dede80] driver 'uvcvideo' on card 'ASUS USB2.0 WebCam'
[vp8_v4l2m2m @ 0x3dede80] Could not find a valid device
[vp8_v4l2m2m @ 0x3dede80] can't configure encoder
Error initializing output stream 0:0 -- Error while opening encoder for output stream #0:0 - maybe incorrect parameters such as bit_rate, rate, width or height

How do I live stream from ffmpeg to a browser using http? If I need some sort of segment muxer, then how do I use it?
Notes:

I use my webcam as an input, as this seems to be close to what I can
expect to get on production.
this is a Linux (Ubuntu) enviorment
this whole setup will be installed on our clients hardware and after
that I will no longer have access to it. Therefore I want to avoid
using anything other then ffmpeg (which they already use), as I'm not
sure if they will be able to manage this long term.

I think that the issue is the video tag.  The video tag does not support live streaming directly, see this question on SO.  Specifically:
A. This answer for a technical description of what you want to implement
B. This answer for a code sample


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Cheap or diy lighting for video production
I am new into video production. I am a maker, I do a lot of electronic projects and write the step by step guides about it in several places of internet. From now I would like to make video about my projects.
My problem is my lab is in a low light condition even in day time, there is no enough light in the room. The video always look dull and noisy grain in the videos that I take. I have two 32w cfl lab laying around and I used it but the video not perfect.
My gear is a Canon EOS t3i(600D) along with a 55-135mm lens and a 50mm prime lens. Here is a similar YouTube video that I would like to produce. Similar video.
I am a student so I don't have a big budget. I have some led strips(15meters), 2x 32w cfl and 200w led flood light in my lab, may be can I make them useful for this? Or please help me to setup a good video light to take good quality videos.

Welcome! Can you share samples of your video that had lighting issues? Can you sketch a floor plan of your production space? How do you want to mount the lights: stands, pipe, permanently directly to the ceiling, or some other way? How high is your ceiling?

LED's especially strip LED strands may give you flicker problems, especially if your shutter isn't locked to the same Hz of the AC the LEDs are running off of.
Best bet, cheap shop lights from a Home Depot type store. Buy tungsten oldschool bulbs, highest wattage the lamps support, and bounce the light off of sheets of foam core board.
This will give you nice white soft light provided you white balance to 4300K.

As a source for this gear, I'd try a farm or tractor supply store. They have these old school lamps mostly used as a heat source for infant livestock. They often come with large steel reflector cans. I've used them before, and aside from the unbearable heat they give off, they fill lighting like any pro kit every time.

I'd second the tungsten suggestion, not just because of flicker but also because cheap LEDs have horrible colour spectrums.. Just doing a white balance won't fix it: while cheap LEDs might look white to the naked eye, their emissions spectrum is full of spikes and valleys, meaning that your subjects will end up looking sunburnt, jaundiced or zombified.

Agree with stib. Unless you're paying for high quality led units- color, or the CRI, which is a measurment of how much of the "actual" spectrum of white light that the diode emits will be far from optimal. Even the major manufacturers like ARRI have had issues with production runs of their new lamps. The LEDs simply dont emit the entire spectrum which the camera will see- and so will you, on monitor or playback. Tungsten truly is the way to go. Its super cheap, emits perfect high quality light, no flicker issues, full spectrum. The key is just to bounce the light, off a wall, a board, etc.


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Video tool with text to speech and video editor (synchronize feature)
I need a video tool in which has the following features. Could you please help to find the best vendor who offers the below features at the best rate.

Convert text into speech.
Screen recording feature with high resolution.
Video Editor (synchronize the audio and video file).

Thank you.

For audio/video synchroniziation check out Pluraleyes.
https://www.redgiant.com/products/shooter-pluraleyes/
If you are a student at a film school they offer better prices.
I recommend reading the manual carefully and watching the vendor's video tutorials before going for the trial version and then deciding on the purchase.


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Adobe Premiere: edit effect curve manually
is there a way to edit the linear curve (see picture) in Premiere afterwards? I cannot seem to find a way to do that. As far as I remember that is possible in After Effects so why not also in Premiere?

It's possible in AfterEffects because AE has far more detailed controls for keyframing and the controls for it's effects.
As for film dissolve, The only way it would be possible would be to make sure you the effects panel, and keyframe the dissolve point (which I believe is possible with that specific filter).
But you don't access it from the pop up window, you select the transition once it's applied, then control it using keyframing on the effects control / modify panel.

A way to do this in Premiere would be using two layers, and key-framing the opacity of the top layer to reveal the lower layer.
Right clicking the upper layer's 'fx' icon allows you to make the Opacity keyframes visible on the clip.
Use the pen tool to add some keyframes.
Right clicking on the opacity keyframes allows you to turn them into bezier curves:


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What are some Best Camera Settings for Recording for Chroma Keying and which color of cloth reflects least green color?
I am recording footage for my music video and I am using chroma keying for eliminating the green screen and changing the background of my video.
I am using After Effects CC 14 video production/editing software. I don't have any third party plugin to remove the green screen background and so I am using Keylight 1.2. The steps that I am following for changing the background can be found in this tutorial.
My questions about the issues which I am getting here are as follows:

The main problem I am getting here is that when I am removing the background using Keylight 1.2, I am getting white light borders on the body of the subject. These borders keep coming after the edit even while I am recording the footage from even different cameras.
The second problem is, after creating the garbage matte and editing the clip at different levels as shown in the above-mentioned tutorial, some parts of the elbow of the subject/model are also becoming transparent. I cannot understand why.
Which color will be the best for my subject/model to wear during the shoot, so that it does not reflect the green color and will have the least reflection.
What will be some best camera settings for recording the footage in order to remove the green screen? My Camera is Nikon D5300 and the lens which I am using with it is 18-55MM.

As an example, you may get my test videos here.

Welcome! What is your lighting setup? What kind of lights and where are they positioned? Can you share a sample already keyed in to show the problems? What changed that there is a color shift on the green screen between the first 2 and the third samples?

Thanks for your interest Sir, @MichaelLiebman. The lights are the normal ceiling LED Lights. They are positioned on the ceiling of the room. Second, The color shift occurred in the third footage because I changed the camera; i.e. I used my cellphone's camera for that one. Please help me ahead, Thanks in advance!!! :)

Thanks for showing interest in solving my problem Sir @MichaelLiebman . The answer to your queries:- 1st :- I am using normal ceiling L.E.D Lights. They are positioned at the ceiling. I am not using any focus light right now. 2nd :-  The color shift in the third sample with respect to the first and second samples, was due to the change of camera; i.e. I used my cellphone's camera for recording the third sample.
If your queries are satisfied, then please help further. Thanks in advance. :)

Improving your lighting will vastly improve your chroma key more than any changes to camera settings. This lighting design can probably be adapted to use DIY fixtures.

@MichaelLiebman ok, thanks for the reference.  I'll read this article and will try to implement it. Also it'll be so great if you suggest me any cloth colour and type, for least reflection of green color.

Lighting is the biggest factor in improving this setup.  Move the subject further away from the sheet, use a lens that has a shallow depth of field so that any imperfections in the sheet are harder to see.  Light the sheet and the subject using diffuse lighting - large soft lights, or bright lights shone through large soft sheets, to make as few shadows as possible.  Backlight the subject slightly to get separation from the green screen and to reduce spill.
Camera-wise, use a camera which records as much colour depth as possible, and doesn't subsample the colour.  (Don't know how the Nikon samples colour)
If you're using After Effects, this is a very useful tutorial to get a good clean key, but without doing the steps above, you may still have difficulty getting a good key.

All consumer-grade cameras use color subsampling, but less subsampling is better, that is, 4:4:4 > 4:2:2 > 4:2:0. Afaik, the Nikon 5300 does not have built-in waveform monitor, so I advise to take a photo of the backing, bring it into Photoshop and check the levels - ideally it should be thin horizontal line.

@RustyCore  thanks for the advice and the information. I'll search more about it on internet and understand what exactly you are trying to say as I'm a newbie and I couldn't understand some of your keywords. Thanks again

@tomh thank you so much for your answer.  I'll try to understand it more clearly with some more research about the things you told me and will try to implement it. I will also watch the tutorial that you mentioned, thank you so much for that too. Yet I don't know much about subsampling of colors, but I will study on internet about it. I also don't have any good setup (if you had seen my embedded videos) to project a backlight (from screen to the back of the model). So, please may you help me in this issue also i.e. any DIY Ideas for it? p.s. Thanks again


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Show a hidden panel
Vegas newbie here. I started working on Vegas Pro 14 and I somehow hid one panel.  I don't know it's name, so I can't even Google it. It is the red one on the left side of timeline tracks.) How can I turn that panel back on?

alt D, D or View > Window Layouts > Default Layout

If you open the Help and navigate to The Vegas Pro Window section, you will see a picture with all main components of the Vegas UI explained.
The area you pointing to is the Track List. It seems that it is not a separate sub-window, but a part of the timeline window. What most likely happened you moved the vertical divider all the way to the left. Try hovering the mouse at the left edge of the timeline window and see whether it will change to a double vertical line with two arrows pointing left and right. Click and drag to the right.


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How to sync drifting audio(s)?

One audio source is the camera, (its sound is more for reference 'cause the distance is approximately 10 meters from the source).
The second audio source is a mixing table getting mics.

The total shooting is around 3 hours on different tapes for the video.
And 1 chunk for the audio.
I have several claps or evident sync during the total event.
I think the camera is not precise, because its sound (and video too) drifts of -5% of the other audio.
Total audio time 3h, video ref 2h50.
My first approach is to treat the sound in Audacity separately first.
But I wonder if Kdenlive or any video editing soft can sync on several references (2 at least)?

Happens to me anytime I use more than 1 recording method. A laptop compared to a cam, even two different programs on the same laptop, always off by a bit. But 10 minutes on 3 hours is about 9m 40s longer than any difference I've ever seen.


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ffmpeg : how to reduce bit rate of transport stream
I'm aiming to reduce the bit rate of a video contained in a transport stream.
The command (ffmpe.exe) is as follows :
ffmpeg -i "udp://127.0.0.1:40101" -map 0:v -c:v libx264 -b:v 256k -maxrate 256k -bufsize 256k -map 0:d -c copy -f mpegts "udp://127.0.0.1:10101"

The result is a tranport stream with the same bit rate.
What I'm doing wrong?
Thank you.
sb

Place the -c copy before -c:v libx264. See https://superuser.com/a/1219824


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How do you make orbiting text in Davinci Resolve 15?
Spinning globe with orbiting texts
Does someone know how to make the orbiting text shown at the bottom right corner of the linked clip or where to such a tutorial online by using Davinci Resolve?

I suspect that there is a more "professional" way to do this using Fusion but I can't speak to that. I can show you a quick and dirty way to do it using an animated PNG in a post below though. I hope that helps.

DaVinci Resolve and Fusion aren't designed for creating 3d assets.  For that, you'll need something like blender, 3ds max, cinema 4d, etc.  Fusion has basic 3d primitives built in, but for something like a globe, you're going to want to import an asset as alembic or fbx into fusion.  From there, you can do some animation, but the animation toolset is still probably stronger in the 3d creation software.  Fusion's strength lies with compositing.  Think of it more like photoshop for moving images (actually, after effects).  The difference there is that fusion is node-based instead of layer based.

But the best tutorials on BMD fusion are from Vito's Con-Fusion series.  In this one, he shows how to make a 3D object by extruding it.  It uses an external plugin, and a different version of fusion, but if you could work out how to then bend the extruded object, you could achieve the effect you're after.  But realistically, there are so many solutions to your question that I think you should watch a lot of Fusion tutorials to get a better idea of what it does, and then come back to VPSE with a more narrowly-scoped question.  https://youtu.be/qUPZookRYGY

The "The Visual Effects Guide" (for Resolve 18) has "Lesson 10 Designing 3D Broadcast Graphics" that seems to explain what you are after

I can put this in a video tutorial later if you need it but here is what I did to achieve an effect like that. I took an animated PNG and recorded a 20 second clip of it doing its thing on the my screen. The PNG was a bouncing Firefox logo and by default is was a transparent animation but I used IrfanView to play the animation, which gave it a solid black background for recording.

Next I imported the clip into Resolve, added it to the video track above the main video, sized and positioned it to the lower left of the screen. Next I went into the color grading page and removed all the black (background) from the animated clip, which left just the bouncing logo over the original video.
This end result is not perfect because I put this together fast to answer your question. But this is what I ended up with in less than a half hour of effort.
Bouncing Firefox Video

You must understand that "Effects" are in some cases a multi-step process.
In this case, you need first a spinning globe with spinning text.
Use a free program like Blender.org and look for some tutorials using words like this: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=universal+logo+style+blender+tutorial
You need to export the logo in a way that can be cut away transparently in Resolve.
One option is to render the background with a pure green color.
But Resolve also accepts PNG image sequences with transparent backgrounds.
Then import that footage in Resolve and composite it.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=davinci+resolve+green+screen


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Stop Handbrake showing filenames in Text on 1st second of video
When I am creating videos using the Handbrake software, it puts the filename I am using in white text on the start of the video.
Is there a setting to stop this or some way around this?
I would like to create some high-quality files and do not want the filename like this to mess it up! Thanks!

Welcome! Are you sure that it is Handbrake adding the text and not the media player showing the file name as it starts playing? I know that sounds obvious, but I've seen that trip people up before.

I'm with Michael on this one, VLC used to do that to me and it drove me mad until I figured out how to turn it off. There's very little chance this is coming from Handbrake!

Thanks - you guys were right. I feel dumb right now!


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How to create a lightweight backup for an iMovie project (i.e. without all the videos)?
I'm using a single iMovie Library  for my video project so that I can create versions easily.
Once I'm done with my project and have, say 10 different versions in there, I want to upload it somewhere (e.g. to Box) to save it for the future. Even though the duplicate projects for versioning don't create duplicate video files, it still contains a single copy of each video.
If I have 5 videos at 1 GB each, my iMovie Library is at least 5 GB big. My videos are already on Box.com, so adding the iMovie Library will take up an extra 5 GB that is not needed.
Is there a way I can back up an iMovie Library without having copies of the videos?

If you have Final Cut Pro X, there is a much better way to do this:

Choose the project you want to export (unfortunately you can only take one, so your versions will be lost), and open it in Final Cut Pro.
This will create a giant Final Cut Pro file.
Now create a new library, make sure all the settings are set up to not store media in the library, and copy the timeline from the old library to the new. Credit goes to this answer.
You now have a highly optimized Final Cut Pro file with all the media/cache/etc stored externally.

This may not be the best workflow, but here is one that works.
To create a lightweight backup of a project:

First, create a backup of your Library in case things break.
Ensure you're only using a single library for each of your projects. Otherwise it'll be harder to backup only the project you care about.
In Finder, show package contents of your iMovie library.
Delete all the "Original Media" videos. You can also delete other large files such as "Render Files".
You should now have a lightweight backup of your iMovie project without all the videos.
Ensure your backup can be restored by duplicating it and following the steps below.

To restore a lightweight backup of a project:

Open the iMovie Library for your lightweight backup.
You'll see that a bunch of videos are marked as missing.
Reimport your original video files, and everything will just work!

Another thing that will make this entire process easier/possible is making sure not to rename/edit/delete your original video files.


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Before I throw away these massive uncompressed VHS digitizations, what kind of post processing can I do to improve them?
An uncompressed digitized VHS tape is like 60 gigs. Obviously way too big. I can compress it down using H.265 and get basically the same quality. But before I do that, is there any production techniques I can use on the uncompressed files to get a better image?
I've only ever dealt with raw photo images. I know that with raw photos I can do a ton more post processing because the bitdepth is deeper than the human eye can gather so there's a lot more information for the post processor to access.
Is this true of a digitized VHS video tape too? Is there any post processing I can do that will improve the image that I should do BEFORE I compress it?

"Raw VHS" cannot be measured in GB because it is analog. So, you already have it encoded with some other codec. If you want to save space, not produce an edited watchable video, then don't. 60 GB is nothing. 4 TB HDD costs less than $100. Or you can split your data into three 25 GB Blu-ray discs for long-term preservation. Better do both: external HDD + Blu-ray if it is really important stuff. If you want to process the videos, I would mostly pay attention to correct interlacing, or deinterlacing into 50p/60p.

Right, I guess I shouldn't say raw. I should say "uncompressed". But is the uncompressed digitization of the vhs have significantly enough information to allow it to be improved in post production? As it's a digitization of a VHS tape, I'm curious if it's actually got more useful information sense it's not like it's a raw file from the image sensors etc.

So it is about 1-hour video? https://toolstud.io/video/bitrate.php?imagewidth=704&imageheight=480&colordepth=24&framerate=29.97 If I were compressing it for further storage I would use H.264 @ about 3-5 Mbit/s. I personally do not use H.265, but is is gaining popularity. Again, I would pay most  attention to interlacing to avoid combing and ghosting.

If you plan on doing any colour fixing or de-noising do that before compressing, just as you would with still images. Noise can be a problem with h.264/5 because it eats up bandwidth, but whether the improvement you can get with a de-noiser is worth it is for you to decide.

because of decreased dynaimc range @stib ?  As far as I can tell that's not an issue with digitized vhs tapes, versus raw photograph has information directly from the sensors, giving it a higher bitdepth and therefore more dynamic range to play with.

Unless your uncompressed codec is 10 or more bit, you're right, it won't have greater dynamic range, but it will still have more information than the compressed copy, so you'll get better results when you process it

I would keep the uncompressed files. If you do compress, but want to use the compressed data for reference, do not deinterlace. You will lose more information if you deinterlace. Keep the compressed video interlaced.


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ffmpeg clear video cache
I am running a compression script to compress my large AVI files to small mp4 files. The script look like this:
#!/bin/bash

FILEPATH="$1"
COMPRESSIONPATH="$2"

ffmpeg -i $FILEPATH -vcodec h264 -acodec mp2 $COMPRESSIONPATH
sudo rm $FILEPATH
curl -H "Content-Type:application/json" -X GET "http://localhost:3000/clovis/api/led"

Whenever I save a compressed video with a filename of compressedVideo#0.mp4 and open it; the newly compressed mp4 file contains footage of a very old video that I recorded and deleted about a week ago. It's almost as ffmpeg is cache that delete video and compressing any filename with compressVideo#0.mp4 with the cached video. What might be the case here? How do I clear ffmpeg cache? Changing the filename fixes this issue, but I wanted to use the filename compressedVideo#0.mp4. There are a few filenames that won't work actually; compressedVideo#0-4.mp4 all won't work. Depending on the filename used it loads the corresponding video that was created and delete long ago.

Solved by clearing browser cache.

Sure? What's the relation between a bash script using ffmpeg with your browser? What if I have a lot of different browsers installed? Which one should its cache be cleared?


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Joining video files together getting gray/scrambled frames at transition point
I have an MPEG-TS video file of 60 seconds that was split in half (30 sec x 2 files). When I concatenate back (cat unix) the two video parts, during the play of the video   right at the moment when there's the transition from first half to the second half of the video, I'm getting a gray frame and frames get scrambled for ~1 second until the video continues to play normally.
Could someone tell me why is this happening ? I only want to understand why it happens and how to theoretically avoid such thing, nothing more.

Welcome! How was the original file split in two?

Thanks @Michael Liebman. Video file was split using ffmpeg basic cut command with audio and video copying so there was no re enconding during the process. I used -ss 00:00:00 and -t for duration. It is worth mentioning that the concatenation was not made through ffmpeg but with a programming language in wich I simply took the bytes of the 2 files then joined together in a array of bytes that I wrote back to the file system. Thanks for your help

Please share the full ffmpeg command. But in all likelihood, ffmpeg didn't just split the file into 2 like Unix split. It actually created two separate TSs that have the header info, so just cating them back together isn't the inverse function. One TS ending and another starting within a file would do what you describe.


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ffmpeg mp4 video created from mp3 with image has longer duration
I am trying to convert an mp3 to mp4 with images. Below are two ffmpeg commands I tried.
Length of mp3: 23 sec

Here, the length of the video is same as the mp3, but video's sound does not work when trying to play on an iPhone:

ffmpeg -loop 1 -i vidimage.jpg -i my.mp3 -shortest -acodec copy -vcodec libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p my-video.mp4

Here, the mp4 plays with audio on an iPhone, but it is only 25 seconds long:

ffmpeg -loop 1 -i vidimage.jpg -i my.mp3 -shortest -acodec aac my-video.mp4

Between the two commands, how can I get an MP4 with the same length as the source audio and plays properly on an iPhone?

Add -fflags +shortest for a closer result.

Unable to find a suitable output format for '+shortest'
+shortest: Invalid argument

Share full command and log.


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How to lower number of parameters passed to ffmpeg
I am processing video with FFmpeg. I am trying to add image overlays at certain times. I have command something like this:
ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -i img_a.png -i img_xx.png -i some_third_image.png -i yy_img.png
-filter_complex overlay=185:H-h-85:enable=between(t\\,0.1\\,0.3),overlay=285:H-h-415:enable=between(t\\,0.3\\,0.7),overlay=185:H-h-35:enable=between(t\\,0.7\\,1.0),overlay=45:H-h-515:enable=between(t\\,1.1\\,1.6)
-c:v libx264 -crf 20 -preset veryfast vid0.mp4

As I am forming/passing parameters to FFmpeg dynamically (programmatically), there can be really very very long parameters list. So large, that I can even receive a message about too long parameter list (based on operating system).
I would like to avoid this. I would like to know how to write code with FFmpeg so there would be fewer parameters passed to FFmpeg? For example, instead of:
-i img_a.png -i img_xx.png -i some_third_image.png -i yy_img.png

can it be something like:
-i "img_a.png,img_xx.png,some_third_image.png,yy_img.png"

And if it can, how can those images be processed by FFmpeg (suppose also by filter_complex overlay)? Please provide an example, if you can.


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ffmpeg side by side video
Im trying to get two 1080p videos side by side,  Wanting the two scaled to 720p and combined both as 1080p
ive tried using the below code . it works fine when using the lower resolution but when i try to make it go higher it gets all mixed up
any tips
ffmpeg -i video.avi -i video2.avi -filter_complex "nullsrc=size=720x288 [base]; [0:v] setpts=PTS-STARTPTS, scale=360x288 [left]; [1:v] setpts=PTS-STARTPTS, scale=360x288 [right]; [base][left] overlay=shortest=1 [tmp1]; [tmp1][right] overlay=shortest=1:x=360:y=0" -c:v libx264 -f flv "rtmp://192.168.1.1/live/videocrop"

when i try to make it go higher it gets all mixed up --> how do you change the command?

by changing nullsrc=size=720x288 and the two scale=360x288 but guessing im doing it wrong lol  any ideas how to get it higher resolution per video

Eg. ffmpeg -i video.avi -i video2.avi -filter_complex "nullsrc=size=1920x1080 [base]; [0:v] setpts=PTS-STARTPTS, scale=1280x720 [left]; [1:v] setpts=PTS-STARTPTS, scale=1280x720 [right]; [base][left] overlay=shortest=1 [tmp1]; [tmp1][right] overlay=shortest=1:x=360:y=0" -c:v libx264 -f flv "rtmp://192.168.1.1/live/videocrop"

Just use hstack:
ffmpeg -i video.avi -i video2.avi -filter_complex "[0:v] setpts=PTS-STARTPTS, scale=360x288 [left]; [1:v] setpts=PTS-STARTPTS, scale=360x288 [right]; [left][right]hstack=inputs=2" -c:v libx264 -f flv rtmp://192.168.1.1/live/videocrop

thanks that works,  Now just run into this problem lol
https://trac.ffmpeg.org/ticket/7547

@rodreguoussmith I'm assuming your build uses --enable-librtmp. The native FFmpeg RTMP implementation apparently is not affected by that bug. You may have to re-complile without --enable-librtmp to be able to use the native RTMP.

thanks  yeah seems that annoying bug is doing it,   are there any other protocols that could do the same job besides RTMP

@rodreguoussmith I'm not sure. I never got interested in streaming protocols. I suggest trying the native RTMP implementation before anything else.


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Final Cut Pro is distorting my music at the very end

I have a problem and I can't find any fix. When I import songs into FCP it sometimes distorts them in the end. But the problem is that they sound fine outside of FCP, and I have paid for them, so it's the best quality it can get. I will link an example...

Welcome! What version of FCP? What codec and parameters are the source files? What are the differences between songs that import ok and songs that import with a problem? Is the problem at the end of the source file, edit, or sequence? What player did you use to confirm that the source files are fine? What else have you tried doing to correct the problem?

@MichaelLiebman It's 10.3.4. "What codec and parameters are the source files?" I don't really understand these words but it's mp3 if that's any help... The difference is only the ending. I just dubbelclicked on the mp3 file, which opened in itunes, to play the sound and the ending was then fine. I have tried by replacing it with the same sound again, but nothing.


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Stream from several android phones to pc
I'd like to know if there is a way to record from several android phones at the same time (at least 2) and send the data in real-time to a computer.
I don't need to watch the recording in real-time, just to save it. The idea is to use the computer as a server, so the phones are not storing anything.
Any clue?
Thanks in advance.

You can use streaming apps for android which transmit the screen to a desktop-machine from which you can capture the image. I wouldn't recommend it though, as the aforementioned streaming will make your image-quality suffer big-time.
Let me propose a different solution:
using the cable of the phone in question, you can directly capture the image from the device. The only issue would be bringing the recordings in sync (if that's important). To fix this, you could open up an online clock for example which displays the exact time, so when stitching together the recordings in post, you'll be able to synchronize the recordings.

Not quite what I need, but thanks for taking the time to answer :D