Grading Colour To Black And White In Davinci Resolve I use Photoshop / ACR a lot and I'm well used to they way they handle conversion from black and white. I have control over reds, greens, blues, yellows, cyan and magentas, which allows a huge flexibility in conversion.

I'm trying to transfer this knowledge to Resolve, but I'm struggling to find a comparable workflow. The Saturation setting in the Primary settings doesn't give any such control, so I'm assuming I need to break the footage in it's RGB components and work on each separately, however I can't find a way to split and recombine them so that I end up with a monochrome image.

I can find almost nothing relating to grading colour footage to black and white in resolve, so what is the most flexible approach?

There is actually a specific option for this in Resolve.

In your primaries pane (bottom left of the color tab) navigate to the "rgb mixer" tab.
In the top right of the tab, click the options menu (3 dots)
Check the 'make monochrome' command.

Now you'll see 6 from the 9 rgb mixer bars turn gray and you'll be able to use the other 3 to mix you black and white the way you want to.

Good luck!

Assuming I'm reading your suggestion correctly, I would recommend making a node for color management, then adding a node after that which changes your footage to black and white. You'll be able to edit the node before the black and white in full color and then re-enable the black and white node to finish the effect.

EDIT:
As I've said, I'm not entirely sure I understand what you want. One thing you can do is make three separate nodes for the R, G, and B channels. They can either be sequential or parallel, assuming you do it correctly it shouldn't matter. You can use each node with a color picker to separate the color channels. This probably won't work exactly how you expect because the color picker will only select objects that have an output of solid color, not separate the colors. You can also use the standard color tools which will give you full color control. The idea is that you have a node with color that you can edit before the desaturating node.


How can you fix color banding from VHS video tape in post-processing? Old VHS tapes often have horizontal lines/bands that slowly scroll up or down the video during playback. This video is already on DVD, so I am trying to remove the banding in post-processing.

The Tools I'm using include:
VirtualDub, AviSynth, Premiere Pro CC, Davinci Resolve.

Are there any techniques, plugins or scripts that can help remove this?

Neat Video has been working miracles on footage for us so far, you can give the trial a go! We've never tried it on this specific artifact (that I know of) but it does have features for restoration/archival type damage, and I highly recommend it.

Caused by not enough back pressure on the tape as it goes to the head try cleaning the head if that doesn't work the machine needs to be checked by a tech.

dca productions


I have a TS file. How do I render it? (I decided to post this here because it doesn't fit very well into the Gaming category, but it is a gaming question.)

I had the idea to try streaming video to Twitch one on computer and to record it with VLC on another, using Livestreamer. The result is a TS file.

If I wanted to upload it to YouTube, how would I convert it to mp4 (Or is there a better format?) without loosing quality?

Also, I hear people talk about rendering their video. I understand that when a video is first recorded it is in 'raw' format. What does rendering entail?

"Raw" ususally refers to uncompressed video (though this is technically wrong), meaning you probably have a very large file. Rendering is the process of re-encoding the video using another codec, usually to reduce file-size while maintaining a decent enough video quality. The reason that .mp4-files with the H264-codec are widely used is that they offer a very good filesize-quality-ratio.

In your case, a very compressed file is not what you might want, since Youtube reencodes your video when you upload it. Every reencoding reduces the video quality, so the double reencoding will result in poor quality.

If you cant upload the .ts-file directly (I don't think Youtube allows this), you could reencode it to an mp4 or avi (imho, the latter is better in this case, though getting the encoding settings right is a bit tougher for beginners). The key is to chose a very high bitrate and the same framerate and resolution as the original video. Using a high bitrate, the quality-loss resulting from the reencoding can be minimized. However, this will result in very large files (espacially if you choose avi), which depending on your internet connection might take very long to upload.

There is a range of free encoding programs out there. I'd recommend XMedia-Recode, but you could also try Xilisoft Video Converter or Format Factory.

Edit: If you want to cut your video (i.e. add an intro and an outro, put different videos together, remove unwanted parts, ...), you'll need a video editing program. There are some freeware programs for this (none of which are as good as professional, paid programs), you can find a list of video editing software at wikipedia.

If I wanted to upload it to YouTube, you neeed convert ts video to webm mp4 first,  total video converter is a converter transcoding .. avhcd mts ts file to mp4 with raw quality.


Why don't phones correct vertical filming? Many people get really mad at filmers suffering from the Vertical Video Syndrome and I find it hard to disagree. Phone-shot videos filmed vertically are really annoying to watch.

But there's one thing I really don't get; why doesn't the phone correct that? The lens itself is always perfectly round and obviously doesn't really have an up- or downside. As far as I can imagine, shooting every video as if the phone was held horizontally would just be a formality in the software.

Is there any reason why that's never implemented? Is there any use in vertical filming?

There is indeed no technical limitation that would prevent us from preventing vertical videos in software. The issue is more of an UX/usability problem.
While the sensor would allow us to capture virtually any part of it (video has usually always a lower resolution than the sensor can provide, when making videos the phone just records a small portion of the sensor area) we kind of don't want an auto correcting orientation as its rather unintuitive. The emphasize is on kind of.

Your phone screen is 9:16 so in order to show 16:9 video on your phone screen you either need to turn your phone by 90° or show the video with giant black bars on the top and bottom, which would be very annoying when recording a video. It's quite unintuitive to record horizontally while in a vertical position, so from a UX design perspective you would say the user wants to shoot vertically when holding its phone vertically because thats what you would usually expect your phone to act like.
Hold it vertical you shoot vertical, hold it horizontal you shoot horizontal, a pretty intuitive concept.

Though its still no reason to not at least implement an option to auto correct this and my guess why phone manufacturers aren't doing this is probably largely due to increased engineering costs in the camera module (afaik it can't be done purely in software, you would probably need to alter the functionality of your camera module a bit).

Users who shoot vertically don't really care about the fact that they have a horrible aspect ratio as they mostly just watch their video on a phone anyway. Vine is a good example for that, it really promotes doing vertical video because the aspect ratio of the device that your video will be watched on most of the time has the same vertical aspect ratio.
So the demand isn't really that huge so far to warrant such a feature but I'm certain we will see this at some point.

There might be a technical limitation: The CCD sensor.

If the CCD is not square, a mechanism needs to be created so that it is always stabilized to the ground level (something more elaborated but like the naval compasses that keep their horizontal level no matter the sea waves).
If it is not the CCD, then there should be a window that makes the 16:9 or whatever aspect ratio that the camera offers to limit the CCD sensor reception area, and in this case that window is what needs to move or part of the captured image is discarded to adjust that image to the aspect ratio.
The truth is that I'm more inclined to not squared CCD sensors, otherwise part of the CMOS memmory will be lost which is a waste of money, and in that case seems more logical to have a squared picture or movie that you can modify to the aspect ratio you like (being you the one that discards the part of the video to match the aspect ratio).


Tagging each player's touches in a soccer game I'm a soccer coach and I'm always looking for ways to help my players improve. For example, we record all of our games so the players can watch them afterwards. However, I find it to be an inefficient use of time for a player to watch the entire game if they only touch the ball 17 times, for example.

My question:  is there a way for me to tag every time each player touches the ball? Then when a player reviews the video, after I finish this editing run, they can pull up the 17 times that I've tagged them? I'm open to using whatever software and process would best meet my need.

Thank you in advance for any help you can provide!

My solution here is time- and labor- intensive, but it will work. I'm tailoring it for Adobe Premiere, since that's what I use, but any multi-track editing software should be able to handle this.

The person editing the video brings the footage of the game (which I'll call the "main video") into the timeline. Then the editor adds a new video track for each player who was in the game.

The editor watches the video of the game (the "main video"), and each time a particular player touches the ball, the editor

cuts the main video before and after that touch
copies that clip from the main video
pastes it onto the track for that player

If two players are touching the ball simultaneously for some reason, the clip gets pasted into both their timelines.

After the whole main video has been "distributed" this way, there will be big gaps between the clips in each players' timeline. The editor now removes the gaps from each timeline.

The editor then hides all tracks except player #1, sets the correct endpoint of the video (for that track), and exports that as its own video. The file name for the export can be that player's name. The editor then hides player #1, and displays player #2, sets the video endpoint, and exports again.

This whole process is somewhat tedious, but it will work. I'll be interested to read other people's ideas!

hey i maybe came up with a better solution :
upload it to youtube and provide your players with the timesatmps in the description this way they can click on it and see their stuff


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

Thanks in advance!

Simple. Get the waveform of your audio file (You could screenshot the audio file in a sound editor to do this).
Animate it moving sideways.

Less simple: Bring the audio into your comp. Right click the audio layer and chose Animation Assistant>Convert audio to keyframes

Now use the keyframes to drive the scale, rotation, position etc of some elements of your comp. E.G. you could add a solid and apply this to the scale property:

[value[0], value[1]*thisComp.layer("Audio Amplitude").effect("Both Channels")("Slider")]

That will multiply the vertical scale of the solid by the amplitude of the audio (both channels).

If you make an array of layers like the one above you can offset the time at which they read the audio level. You can use the valueAtTime() function to use each solid layer's index (the layer number) to add a two frame delay to each successive layer like this (two or more frames looks better than one frame, because a one-frame delay makes it look like you used method 1):

[value[0], value[1]*thisComp.layer("Audio Amplitude").effect("Both Channels")("Slider").valueAtTime(time + index*thisComp.frameDuration)]

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

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

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

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


Recommendable production codecs for Adobe video products I'm currently searching for new codecs that are better suited for production than the ones we are currently using. So far we used QuickTime Animation and PhotoJPEG. The latter always proved as something "rocksolid" and never made any problems. Though its lossy and has no alpha, thats when we used Animation but that codec is a dinosaur when it comes to compression and bit-depth.
I generally dislike all the built-in QuickTime codecs as they either dont deliver all the formats options or are just not pracitcal in a multi OS workflow. The whole Pro-Res family is a no go as it can only be encoded on a mac (except for the beta version of the ffdshow ProRes encoder).

So far I'm very happy with JPEG2000 using the j2k plugin from fnordware, the format has all the good things from legacy JPEG and Animation and has even more features but the downside is the fact that its an image sequence which is not so nice to handle as a single container file. The crippled JPEG2000 codec in QuickTime is no option.

So what I'm searching is a codec that can be used with container formats like .avi or .mov (or any other container, it really doesn't matter), with a good compressability in the range of lossless JPEG2000, atleast 16bit per channel and support for an alpha channel. E: And of course lossless if that wasn't clear so far. Otional lossy compression like JPEG2000 has, would be great but not necessary.

I hope someone can suggest me something, its no problem if the format needs a plugin for After Effects, Premiere etc. it just needs to be compatible with CS6 and not be restricted to Windows or Mac.

Ut Video is an editor friendly lossless video codec and is a good choice for in house production as an intermediary. It is fast, open source, actively developed, supports RGB(A)/ULRA (for your alpha channel requirement) and YUV colorspaces, and is available for Windows, OS X, and Linux. You can install it on Windows and it will show up in Adobe Media Encoder, After Effects, etc. I don't know if it will fit all of your needs, but it is worth a try.

Apple ProRes 422 is very good, however you need a codec on PC to be able to read it and a PC cannot encode it, however it is probably the most widely accepted format within the industry.

Using FFmpeg when working with video editing is pretty much useless, it is designed for web application but not used AT ALL in the professional world.

If you are PC ONLY check out DVCPRO HD codecs, however far inferior to ProRes


How much to charge for a re-posting of a video? Created a short promotional video for a client, it's an online magazine.

For the sake of example, let's say I charged the magazine $700. The video is embedded into the magazine using a proprietary method (ie: not youtube, vimeo, or any other video sharing site with embed options). This is fine.

Now the video happens to be something of an pseudo-official biography on a local artist (hes in it, he talks in it, official interview stuff), but the video wasn't made FOR him, but now he's inquiring how much it would cost him to embed the video on HIS site as well, for marketing purposes.

Again, lets say I charged the Magazine $700 (2.5min video), how much should I charge for a re-embed?

(ps: I own the copyrights)

That is completely up to you, how much is it worth to you, etc.  Keeping in mind you have to do zero additional work on it to give it to him, and if he were to put it up on his site without your knowledge you would loose nothing.

The same amount of money for every person. But if he couldn't afford it then go for less 200? 300? ;)


Hissing Sound with Rode NTG2 Phantom I have a loud hissing problem using my Rode NTG 2 when it was hooked up to my Tascam D40. When I record from the internal Tascam mics, there isn't a hiss. So I think it's my Rode mic that is causing the hiss. Has anyone dealt with this before? I've tried different input levels and always have the problem with mic. Should I get it replaced with my warranty or is this something I can fix?

It's the Phantom power.  I've done a lot of testing and the Phantom power adds a lot of noise to the NTG 2. I don't know why, but if you don't run it on phantom power and use it only with batteries, the noise goes away.

Have you applied a low pass and/or high pass filter on the audio?  Mid grade mics often have built in high/low pass filtering but higher end pro mics will leave the audio feed untouched and expect you to fix it in post.


Can FCPX work with vector graphics? I've tried to import .eps and .ai files unsuccessfully. Are there any vector formats supported by FCPX?

Here is a workaround I've discovered that seems to work ok. It's not elegant, but it gives you vector support within FCPX, which can be handy in a number of situations. It does require Apple Motion, however.

Convert your vector file into a PDF using Preview.
Create a Final Cut Generator in Apple Motion
Import PDF
Click the PDF in the "Media" pane (next to the Viewer), then in the inspector, un-click "Fixed Resolution" in the "Media" tab.
Drag the file into your composition.
Save As...

This will create a generator in FCPX, which is a little more permanent than making a simple file. But if you're doing work for a client and want a persistent vector version of their logo or something, this can be very helpful.

I have downloaded and installed Affinity for a one time price.  Affinity runs only on a Mac, will directly import layered AI and PDF files.  Then you can render out PNG and JPGs in any resolution you require for your project.  It is quick and convenient once you get past the learning curve.  Good luck.


How to deinterlace GRAY video and convert it to .avi? I have binary data stream from analogue camera and convert it to .avi with this

λ ffmpeg -f rawvideo -pix_fmt gray -s:v 700x220 -i orbita_d.bin -c:v rawvideo -pix_fmt yuv420p out.avi

what do I need to deinterlace it? I read about yadiff, but it looks like it doesn't work with raw pixel data.

ffmpeg -f rawvideo -pix_fmt gray -s:v 700x220 -i test1.bin -c:v rawvideo -pix_fmt gray -vf tinterlace,setpts=0.5*PTS out.avi

Do the trick for me.


Can I record directly to a computer with the HC-V250? I'm considering purchase of the Panasonic HC-V250, but my primary use case is recording directly to a folder on my computer. (I do a lot of post-production editing, so I need all the files on my computer.) The HC-V250 can stream via UStream, but I don't know if this means that it's also capable of recording to a computer. (I'd assume not.)

For reference, I'm using a Windows 8.1 computer. This detail also does not appear to be stated in the manual or any reviews on various sites I've found this product on.

Is it possible to use the HC-V250 to record directly to a computer, or do I have to record to the memory card and then (painfully) transfer the files?

I have the same camera. As far as I can remember it can be used in "web cam" mode where it records straight to the computer.

I don't have a definitive answer, but I can offer a suggestion. If the camera can generate a stream, try a stream recorder. In fact, doesn't UStream offer a stream recorder of its own?

If not, google "record video stream" for several offering, some free. I use AVC Ultimate (not free) but I don't know if it will capture UStream output. They have a trial version but it may not cover the stream capture feature.


Converting iCop Encrypted DAV to AVI or MP4 I work for a newspaper. Late last year there was a car chase leading to the death of a couple of people. We've recently ... persuaded ... the police involved to release the dash cam footage.

Unfortunately they are using the iCop software, and the footage they released is encrypted and can only be viewed through the shared viewer that they sent along with it.

We want to convert this to an AVI or MP4 format, so we can edit and upload to our website with the story about the accident. Does anyone have any experience working with this video format? I've Googled heavily, and I have used a multitude of other converters that work with DAV format, but unfortunately I believe the encryption on this one is causing the file to not convert properly.

My company software Amped FIVE supports the conversion of hundreds of proprietary DVR formats, including the DAV. I am not sure we ever encountered an encrypted DAV, though it may be worth a try. Feel free to contact me to evaluate your file.

I fully agree with you that screen capture is the last resort.

In my opinion, most converting software on the market don't support to convert DAV files, except Dahua AVI Convert.

But it only can convert DAV to AVI, not all video formats.


Which (video game) recording program fits for these criteria? Record games
File size has to be small (fps doesn't need to be higher than 30, resolution is only 720×480)
Barely uses cpu
The program does not lock the framerate or anything else that changes my gaming experience
Paid or Free
No watermarks

Note relating to file size: is it possible to record 10 hours and use 100gb or less?

None.  If you want low CPU/GPU usage and small file size, you need a hardware encoder.  Period, end of story.  Games are CPU/GPU intensive and video compression is also exceedingly demanding on CPU/GPU.  Programs like FRAPS capture video smoothly by postponing the compression until later and instead save video as very large, minimally compressed files.  This works because most games do not make intensive use of the disk drives.

You can either capture in large files with minimal impact and then batch transcode them to a smaller size or you can buy a dedicated hardware encoder that can take the load off the CPU and GPU. Those are your only two options.

Update: If you only need 10 hours to fit within 100GB, then you might be ok for an SD feed.  It doesn't really have to be that highly compressed at that low of resolution.  It is still going to hit your CPU or GPU though, so gaming performance will be impacted, just not quite as badly as trying to do something like h.264.

I'd probably start by trying something like a DV codec and see how your computer handles it.  Millage will vary based on how much your computer actually needs for the game.  Hardware encoders or software encoding after the fact are still the best option overall though, since they maximize the quality of the recording.  (Fast compression is not good compression unless it is specialized hardware.)

Free: Fraps
Commercial: Movavi Game Recorder

As for the output video format - choose H.264 in MP4 container. This provides a better quality and a small file size


4k vs. 1080p on a 1080p monitor Is it smart to watch a 4k video on a 1080p monitor versus watching it in 1080p (especially on youtube)? Is there any difference for the human eye?

No, there is no difference to the human eye (or exceptionally minimal).  Your monitor can't display higher quality than it is capable of displaying.  The only advantage you would have is if you were to zoom in on part of the image, you would have more detail when you zoomed in.

The exception to this is if the 4k stream uses enough extra bandwidth to reduce the number of artifacts present in the stream, but for a well configured stream this shouldn't be a significant factor.  For Youtube settings, that may or may not be noticeable depending on your sensitivity to artifacts and the type of content you are viewing.

Everyone who says that it's useless to watch 4k video on a 1080p monitor is wrong.


How can I extend the ten minute video limit on a Canon PowerShot ELPH 300 HS? This question addresses the fact that DSLRs have limits on video recording time and provides some speculation as to why the limit exists. It mentions that Canon has a 30 minute limit.

I am recording HD video on a Canon PowerShot ELPH 300 HS point-and-shoot, and am coming up against a 10 minute limit. This site says that there is a 60 minute limit on standard definition and 10 minute limit on high definition. With 720p a 10 minute video is about 1.5 Gb. I wanted to mention the 10 minute limit explicitly because it seems that many people talk about a 30 minute limit and so this seemed like a somewhat unique case.

My question is whether there is a way to extend the limit from 10 to something like 30 minutes? 10 minutes is just short for my purposes of recording my own judo tournament matches.

I guess it would have to be some kind of patch to the firmware. Does such a thing exist?

I believe the limit is due to the file size, not the actual recording length.  This forum thread seems to confirm this for the T2i/500D, and Wikipedia agrees for the 5D mkII.  Also according to these sources, the limit for both cameras is 4gb.

For the PowerShot cameras, the file size limit is likely much lower. For the S2, it appears to be 1gb.

What all this means is that the time limit isn't a time limit, per se... but a file size limit.  So if you are able/willing to reduce the file quality, you may be able to extend the time limit.

If you can shoot in a lower quality video mode (say 480i instead of 720p), that will likely improve your recording time.  If you can reduce the frame rate, that may improve your time limit, as well.  Of course all of these things will make the video noticibly lower quality, as well.

If you can't get different equipment, you may be best off strategically stopping and starting the video during pauses in the action.

Canon powershot hs100 and hs 300, at 4Gb apparently shut off due to "tariff" and copyright problems.
It says it right in the manual. "10 minute clips"
At HD 1920 it lasted ten minutes. At 640 it lasted 1 hour.


Exporting a video from Premiere spits out incorrect quality I'm trying to export a video from Premiere(CC) with the following settings:

I recorded this video in Motion-JPEG 1080p/60Fps out of Bandicam. I've recorded videos in Bandicam (same settings as mentioned) and edited said videos in Premiere, and exported those videos with the same problem. I only noticed the issue just now.

The only difference in my export settings in Premiere this time, is that I decided to use 60Mbps target, as previous exports have been in the 20-40 range.

When my file had finished rendering I checked the bitrate and file size, and was shocked to discover Windows 7 telling me that it was 12Mbps and 3GB, despite Premiere's target being 60Mbps and estimated 11.5GB.

Looking at my previous video that was 40Mbps Windows is showing an actual bitrate of 8Mbps. My current video took about an hour to render, yet only has a measly 12Mbps.

Why is this happening and what can I do to prevent it/get full quality?

When you export with h.264 in Premiere it has two bars as you show. A target bitrate, and a maximum bitrate.

The target bitrate is after all, only a target, and if your video doesn't have enough movement or fast action then you won't get the full Mbps that you've set. Even lowering it enough to only export 12Mbps because your video doesn't have a lot of movement.

Exporting a video with more movement will yield 60Mbps or more, depending on your settings.


ffmpeg: white padding is light grey but not white I want to generate 16:9 thumbnails from videos with white padding but the resulting picture has grey padding instead of white. This is the command line (input here is a jpg but the effect is the same when using a video):

ffmpeg.exe -i "https://gooseberry.blender.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/franck.jpg" -filter_complex scale=iw*min(852/iw\,480/ih):ih*min(852/iw\,480/ih),pad=852:480:(852-iw*min(852/iw\,480/ih))/2:(480-ih*min(852/iw\,480/ih))/2:white,fps=fps=50/5.000000 output.jpg

the resulting image (text and white box added with paint):

even though the padding color is white it's light grey in reality. Is there a way to get it 'whiter'? It's especially ugly if you plan to print it on paper.

The end of the filter chain should output full RGB, like this:

Windows batch:

ffmpeg.exe -i "https://gooseberry.blender.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/franck.jpg" ^
  -filter_complex ^
   scale=iw*min(852/iw\,480/ih):ih*min(852/iw\,480/ih),^
pad=852:480:(852-iw*min(852/iw\,480/ih))/2:(480-ih*min(852/iw\,480/ih))/2:white,^
format=rgb24 franck-padded.jpg

Linux bash:

ffmpeg -i "https://gooseberry.blender.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/franck.jpg" \
  -filter_complex \
   "scale=iw*min(852/iw\,480/ih):ih*min(852/iw\,480/ih),\
pad=852:480:(852-iw*min(852/iw\,480/ih))/2:(480-ih*min(852/iw\,480/ih))/2:white,\
format=rgb24" franck-padded.jpg

The important part is format=rgb24 which keeps or converts the final filter output to the RGB pixel format, which allows full range values from 0-255. Without that final filter, ffmpeg will convert the filter output to the YUV pixel format where the range of legal values is 16 to 235 for luma (brightness) - 16 maps to black and 235 to white - and 16 to 240 for the chroma components (color). (The default YUV colorspace range is a legacy of analog television signals and carried over into the digital realm by the MPEG committee and hence still widely adhered to by most digital video formats)

The accepted answer doesn't work for me. I find a work around to this problem. PNG images doesn't have this issue. So you could first convert the file into PNG, then do the padding and convert it back to original image type. Let's say you have a file named input.jpeg, try something like this:

ffmpeg -i input.jpeg -y temp.png
ffmpeg -i temp.png -vf "pad=iw+0:ih+300:0:300:#FFFFFF@1" -y output.jpeg


Recompressing many huge MOV files My camcorder produces huge MOV files, and I use it for about 1 hour every day, which gives me more than 7 GB of data per day (around 128 MB per minute of recording). Here is the codec information given by ffmpeg -i for a sample 12 minute clip:

Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'Video.MOV':
  Metadata:
    major_brand     : qt
    minor_version   : 0
    compatible_brands: qt
    creation_time   : 2013-02-05 20:12:47
    original_format : NVT-IM
    original_format-eng: NVT-IM
    comment         : CarDV-TURNKEY
    comment-eng     : CarDV-TURNKEY
  Duration: 00:12:37.00, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 15935 kb/s
    Stream #0:0(eng): Video: h264 (High) (avc1 / 0x31637661), yuv420p, 1920x1080, 14745 kb/s, 30 fps, 30 tbr, 30k tbn, 60k tbc (default)
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2016-02-05 20:12:47
      handler_name    : DataHandler
      encoder         : h264
    Stream #0:1(eng): Audio: pcm_s16le (sowt / 0x74776F73), 32000 Hz, 1 channels, s16, 512 kb/s (default)
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2015-02-05 20:12:47
      handler_name    : DataHandler

These are files I would like to keep, and in a decent quality. I will not have storage enough to keep them all in the long term, and my country is one of the most expensive places (if not the most) to purchase or import hardware components, so buying new hard drives is really out of the question.

I have tried recompressing this 12 minute clip using different settings on Handbrake (including of course, the Normal and High profiles), but the resulting file is generally the same size, if not bigger (around 1.5 GB).

I have searched on YouTube for HD videos, and have downloaded a few videos just to check their size, and I got 1080p 12 minute clips for around 200-300 MB in size. They may have reduced some quality, but in my eyes, 1080p videos on YouTube generally look pretty sharp. If possible, I would like similar results!

While searching here on Video Production, I have found this answer which says that "cameras have to compress on-the-fly, so they use constrained baseline mode (...) if you'd like to recover some space, you can use ffmpeg". I have tried running that particular command, but still I am getting huge files.

I am on Linux, but could maybe run Windows in a virtual machine too.

My earlier answer still holds in general. Additional advice I can provide is to try higher CRF values and use the veryslow preset.

ffmpeg -i input.mov -c:v libx264 -crf 23 -preset veryslow -c:a copy -c:d copy -map 0 compressed.mov

You can also mimic a constrained quality mode by setting

ffmpeg -i input.mov -c:v libx264 -crf 21 -preset veryslow -maxrate 5M -bufsize 10M -c:a copy -c:d copy -map 0 compressed.mov

Why don't you transcode the footage to h265?
Quote from https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Encode/H.265:
"H.265 (also known as HEVC) offers 50-75% more compression efficiency compared to H.264 video, while retaining the same visual quality."

Alternatively you could consider transcoding to VP9 codec which seems to offer a better compromise between file size and compression times. Both codecs should deliver same quality image at lower file sizes than h264.


How Can I Reduce Noise On a 5D Mk3? The internet is full to bursting with comparisons of noise on the 5D Mk3 at different ISOs, but there is next to nothing about how to reduce noise or work with it / around it.

I am experiencing noise across all ISO settings, but obviously worse the higher I go. I never shoot above 800 and try and stay as low as possible. I am careful not to underexpose, but I still get a fizzy noise in the midtones and shadows.

I appreciate that the 5D is flawed when it comes to video and I don't need to be told how a dedicated video camera will achieve better results; I am a stills photographer and I don't want to buy a second camera.

So given the known limitations of the 5D Mk3, how can I shoot to reduce the noise and what workflows are best for removing noise in post?

I am shooting Cinestyle and will soon be shooting RAW via Magic Lantern.

Certainly using RAW on ML will help.  With 14 bit color, your noise reduction options are a lot more advanced.  Traditional noise reduction that you are used to from photos can be used with video as well using either color grading software or editing software.  (With RAW video, it would be in the color grading software before mixing down to processed clips.)  Additionally, with RAW, you won't have the encoding artifact which you may be misinterpreting as noise as well.

That said, how bad of noise are you getting.  I'm in the reverse situation of you.  I started as a video guy and switched to photography and got the 5D Mark iii because of it's strengths in both areas.  You should not be getting significant noise issues below 800 ISO on your 5D Mark iii unless something is wrong.  The 5D Mark iii shoots outstanding video and with RAW is compared fairly closely (though still noticeably different from) much more expensive cameras like the C300 or even some lower end ARRI cameras.

It is generally applauded for it's high video quality and good low light video capability.  Can you post a sample that demonstrates the problem you are seeing?  I wonder if there might be some other issue causing your problems as my 5D Mark iii doesn't give what I would consider unreasonable noise levels on video even at ISOs like 3200 or even 6400 in some lighting conditions.

ISO 3200 video frame grab

There is some noise, but it's pretty limited, particularly considering this is in the shadows under a desk, inside, with no other light other than what was coming in through the window above the table.  There are some newer cameras in the same or lower price range that have slightly improved on the capability, but the 5D mark iii is still one of the top contenders last time I looked around.

Other than that, the easiest option, like Jason Conrad mentioned, is to use more light and lower numbered ISO.

go to this post of canon and I think it can be helpfull:
https://support.usa.canon.com/kb/index?page=content&id=ART143838&act=RATE&impressions=false&isCCA=true&newguid=6d0a16cf8896407382590864d90a63f2


Decreasing levels of other channels when voice channel comes in I'm recording commentary over a video, and when I'm talking in the commentary I'd like the other channel's audio to get quieter to compensate for my voice. If anyone is familiar with discord, I know that when talking to people in a group chat it makes other programs quieter, if that helps make sense of what I'm trying to do.

I'm really inexperienced with video editing, but I have access to audacity, Adobe audition, and premiere. I'm also open to other programs (free or cheap) if they can do this easier.

"Ducking" is the canonical term for what you want, usually done with a compressor in the main program chain with the sidechain taken from your mic channel.

Audition 2018 has a auto ducking feature that may be of use, but really anything that lets you drop an audio compressor across the program bus and sidechain it to the mic input will work.

You could also keyframe the volume in premiere so that in decreases/increases when you need it to.


Cheap solution for shooting with multiple (>2) cameras in sync (genlock or LANC?) I'm doing research into natural phenomena in computer vision, and I'm looking for a method of shooting video from multiple camera angles. It's likely that the subject will move very erratically, therefore any synchronization issues between the cameras will be a problem. Imagine a flame or flowing water, it's hard to say exactly but it's going to need to be microseconds rather than milliseconds. I will want to use as many as 8 cameras, ideally constrained by budget rather than the ability to keep them in sync.

The cameras the department owns are Canon DSLRs, however after much searching it seems infeasible to synchronize them, especially with this level of accuracy. Therefore if I can find affordable cameras that can be synchronized easily, we might be able to buy some.

The two options available to me seem to be genlock and LANC. From what I can tell, I'm not going to get hold of a single genlock-able camera for under, say, £5000. Even forgetting the genlock signal, that's too much for us to be able to afford one, let alone 8. The Sony/Canon LANC thing seems more feasible, however I can't find any reliable information about how to go about setting this up or what cameras actually support it which are available now. I keep hitting dead-ends trying to look into this, and it doesn't help that mostly everyone doing this is trying to shoot in just stereo. Can anyone advise me on what set up we'd need and how much it would roughly cost? Or if there's some other synchronization solution that someone would like to recommend? Ease and cost are the biggest factors! Quality of video would of course be nice, but something is better than nothing.

Thanks! And I hope this doesn't sound like a shopping recommendation question. While I do want to go shopping, I really just need help understanding the synchronization techniques, and I'll work out what to buy after that!

A year after posting this question, I'm getting a few extra comments and answers, which is really great. It is technically still a problem, but let me share what I've learned in the last year, in case anyone else stumbles on this page with a similar problem.

We came up with two inexpensive solutions to the problem which I think will work, in the right conditions.

Use a high speed strobe light. This only works if the subject does not emit light (unfortunately not the case for me) and can be placed in a very dark room. Get hold of a very fast very accurate strobe light, then set it to go off at the same frequency as the cameras, say 50fps/50hz. Then set the shutter speed of all the cameras to 1/50th of a second, i.e. the shutter is always open. Place the subject in a very dark room, and set the aperture such that the video appears black without the light. Then illuminate with the strobe light. The videos will naturally be synchronised, because the only light they get is from the strobe, and it happens once per frame. Difficulty is getting a precise enough strobe. But I hear that they are used in heavy manufacturing operations to inspect blades/wheels/belts etc, which can't be turned off. You light the tool only with a strobe that has analogue control, and slowly increase the speed of the strobe, and as you reach the frequency of the tool it will appear to slow down, and eventually stop. Now you can inspect for problems. Just don't touch it ;).
Use the vsync signal on the composite video out of the cameras. This is inspired by http://samj.snappages.com/. This signal is sent out regularly every frame, and with some electronics you can measure the difference between the signal on two (or more) different cameras. You can then power cycle the camera (or on some cameras, take a picture. More on that later...) and measure it again, and so on. If you are clever with the timing on the power cycling you can bring them closer and closer together to within a threshold. We didn't end up trying this just because we didn't end up building the circuit, and we figured this would just be too fiddly to work with, especially with more than 2 cameras.

As I said, we didn't end up doing either of these. We ended up putting in a bid for funding for a not-inexpensive system, one that is designed for this exact purpose, from a company such as NorPix. These are synchronised over ethernet and come set up. I was never able to find out how exactly (protocol etc) they use ethernet to synchronise, so if someone wants to explain that I'd be very interested. Last time I was updated, I was told we did find some money, but of course, if you know anything about academic bureaucracy you won't be surprised to find out that I'm still waiting for the equipment!

If anyone does have a magic idea that achieves true synchronisation inexpensively, I'm still open to suggestions.

To close, I will mention a strategy that did not work, in my tests. And that is the one on this website: http://3dfilmfactory.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=93:gen-lock-canon-5d-mark-ii-cameras-and-shoot-3d

Granted, we have different hardware, Canon 60Ds, and we had very cheap off-brand wireless shutter releases. However I have no reason to think they caused any noticeable difference to the setup in the link. I set up tests using an LED device, like Bokan suggested in his answer, and the average difference in synchronisation only dropped by about 1ms after using the wireless shutter release compared to the control tests, and sometimes it made it worse. I didn't do any statistical analysis, but I suspect it would not be significant compared to chance. I think it's very likely that 3D Film Factory either weren't shooting material in which they'd notice the synchronisation problem, or their more expensive hardware gave a slightly more reliable result which still isn't measurably that different. Scaling to more than 2 cameras, I'm confident that it's not a reliable method.

However, using the remote shutter release does reset the video. If you use the 'record' button on the cameras (or a remote), then it simply starts saving the footage that is already being processed. In other words, if you measure the synchronisation in several different tests without turning the camera off, taking a picture, or letting it go into power save mode, then the synchronisation will be the same. You could incorporate this mechanism into approach number (2) above: rather than power cycling the cameras it could take pictures until the vsync signals were in line. It would be a cool device, we just never got round to actually building it.

Thanks again for any suggestions. I hope someday someone will find this useful, and the months I wasted trying to solve it will save someone a bit of time!

I think the solution is rather simple,hold large stopwatch in front of two cameras for the first few seconds; during editing can easily be synced. I used this methods, working fine.


Whats the best video camera for shooting weddings and Docs? I was just wondering what would be the best professional Video Camera for shooting weddings and documentaries? I have a Canon 6D but want to invest in a prosumer camera that I can move around and keep focus. I find it awkward that you cant digitally zoom in to check focus on the 6D when its recording.

I was looking at the Canon C100 but its not very ergonomically designed for run and gun shooting. That said with the Atmos Ninja it can be every bit as good as its big brother the C500. Has anyone used this for weddings.

Is there anything in particular that would be a deal breaker on a camera. Ie no XLR's, a noisy internal zoom.

Should I invest in gear that can shoot 4K? I want to steer clear of Mini DV and i have a macbook pro with 16 gb RAM and an i7 processor.

I'm thinking of spending between 3000 - 3500 Euro on it as it'll need to last me for years.

I'd really appreciate any information you can give. Thanks!

I shoot weddings and currently use a Canon 7D with a Zoom lens, it is all up to how you shoot and feel when shooting, I like the 7D as it is small and doesnt look to intrusive, I would like to upgrade to the Canon C100 as it would give me better options but still stay in the small form.

It is all down to personal preference in the end, You could just hire a few out and see if you like to feel, form factor etc as some people would say go ARRI and others would be DSLR route

"Best" is kind of a vague request.  Based on what you wrote about your shooting,  maybe you should look at the Canon 5dmkIII, or the Sony A7S.  Both have superior video, and are well-suited for run-and-gun.


Using 60 fps footage on 23.976 sequence without slowing down or dropping frames I just recorded a 4k 60 fps clip from my GoPro and dropped it with some other clips on a timeline which is 23.976 fps, and the 60 fps clip looks really weird and glittery.

Is there a way to play this real time without dropping frames? I'm using Adobe Premiere Pro.

You can not. You have contradicting parameters.

You need to make some decisions. Either:

Leave your project at 29.97 and drop 1 every 2 frames of your 60fps clip.
Leave your project at 29.97 and use all the frames of the 60 fps clip making it slow-motion 2x.
Change the project speed to 60fps and render twice every frame of the other footage.
Change the project speed to 60fps and make a timewarp filter on the 29.97 footage, what it does is inventing new pixels to the new frames, making it look smoother if the program used is a good one.
Preparing separated projects and making a strange arrangement of projectors projecting two framerates at some cinema screen... Nop, let us discard this idea and just keep the other 4 in mind.


Proper time stretch in After Effects for multiple layers So when I stretch the two chosen layers, they do stretch together, but the collision point shifts so I need to correct it manually.

How can I simultaneously change the length of the layers without messing the scene?

I've tried to show the things in this picture. Thanks!

You can nest this two clips in new composition, and change time starching on it.

I don't know if it works, but you may add a marker on each layer when the transition without stretching starts pressing this key: *

Then, I think the markers should be paired with the original frames and then you just have to match them in the timeline again.

Sorry if this doesn't work or there's a better way, it's just an idea.


How come my Adobe Illustrator file doesn't show up in After Effects? I had created an Adobe Illustrator animation/illustration file with 9 layers each depicting a drawing that progresses.

I tried to import the file to Adobe After Effects successfully, but the image/drawing doesn't show up.

I have recorded a video of it here:

Anyone know why? What can I do to have the illustrations show up on the Effects screen?

Thank you,
Jae

Are you manually animating in illustrator and then bringing them in as individual frames in After Effects or are they independent assets?  After Effects treats Illustrator files as images that are displayed across multiple frames and the background is transparent.  You then animate them in After Effects itself by positioning and scaling and such.

If you have multiple layers in Illustrator, you also need to decide which layers are imported as your asset.  You can either flatten it or use individual layers when importing.

Its just the really bad implementation of the new code in CC. Adobe have released too many versions without adequate testing. They have made the suite rentalware so there is less pressure on them to produce high quality updates. As a result, their software is full of bugs.


Why is Audio and Video out of Sync during recording? I make a 30 second recording using a webcam on a laptop. When I play the .avi file afterwards, the audio and video are out of step. The sound starts arriving about a second after it should do and gets increasingly delayed.

Why is this?

Whilst I am making the recording, I can see the video that is being captured being displayed on the laptop monitor. I can actually get lip synch if I  s-p-e-a-k  l-i-k-e  t-h-i-s.

I clap my hands at the start of the video. When I watch the video afterwards, the sounId is delayed by about a second.

The audio track continues for about ten or so seconds after the video component has finished. (A still image remains in the video player while the voice continues.)

I can fix this problem after the recording (laboriously), but I want to have the recording work properly in the first place.

The webcam is a BisonCam NB Pro integrated into the laptop. It is a 2 Megapixel camera that can record at 15 fps. The CPU is an Intel dual core T4200. The machine has 4GB of RAM. I am saving the recording to a file on a ramdisk, so I don't think the hard drive is the problem. I am using BisonCap to record, the software that came with the computer. I have set recording for 15 fps.

Please help!

You should check your recorded video with MediaInfo. Regarding your problem, it shows,

if the durations of the video and the audio is the same or not,
if the interleave of the audio (the starting offset) is set correctly
in which sampling rate your audio was recorded.

Then, I would import your video file into Audacity (which imports only the audio, of course).

On the left side of each track you find the sampling rate, too. Is this the same sampling rate as being reported by MediaInfo?
Does Audacity play the audio too slow, too?

My impression from the symptoms that you describe is that the audio is recorded at a certain sampling rate, but reported as a lower sampling rate, or not at all.

Try to modify your sampling rate, either in your recordings settings, or in the Windows system. On Win7, it's under Control Panel->Hardware & Sound->Manage Audio Devices->Recording. There, select your microphone, then Properties->Advanced. There you can change the sampling rate.

If changing the sampling rate doesn't help, then you can only try another webcam software, or record the audio independently.

I had the same problem with audio being out of sync with the image, recording from my webcam using screen recorder. In my case it seems it was caused by the time it takes for the webcam to activate. I changed 'delay before capture' to 2 seconds and it seems to have fixed the problem.


Why is there a “2D” disc in every Blu-Ray 3D package? Wikipedia says:

  MPEG4-MVC compresses both left and right eye views with a typical 50% overhead compared to equivalent 2D content, and can provide full 1080p resolution backward compatibility with current 2D Blu-ray Disc players.

So if a Blu-Ray 3D is completely backwards compatible to a regular Blu-Ray, why do all consumer Blu-Ray-3D packages contain a 2D as well as a 3D disc? Is that just marketing (so people will even buy it if they don’t yet have a 3D-capable setup) or is there some technical reason behind this?

Disk space.  The 3d content takes more space so there is generally not enough room for special features.  The 2d special features are only on the 2d disk.  They take up the room that the second eye takes on the 3d disk.  They could make a special features only disk, but this is generally more expensive since it requires another master and another production line.  It's more cost effective and better marketing to just include the 2D copy.

My guess is that because you spent a lot of money for the 3d equipment, they know you ARE going to buy 3d products no matter what the cost. The companies include the 2d versions to lessen the pain of the cost giving you the illusion they are not screwing you. It is about how much money goes into their pockets, not about how much content goes in the packaging.


Platform used for creating following video This may be a subjective question, but I'm not sure where else to ask, so apologies in advance!
I want to know the name of the software being used to make such purple, pink blocks as shown in the video below

It is most likely simply a presentation program. The best known is PowerPoint, but you can get one free using Libre Office https://www.libreoffice.org/ or some web-based like google docs.
Libre Office has two programs that can be suitable. Impress and Draw.

I would do it in Adobe illustrator as it helps with lining up things


How to change the resolution/size of iMovie so I can export square videos for Instagram? Looking to change the resolution dimensions to a square. Does anyone know how to do this?

You might crop each slide.  I haven't looked but if you have a lot of slide thee might be a way to set the crop as a 'default'


Frame capture from videos: I-frame vs P-frames I'm trying to capture various frames within a x264-encoded video files into png files (in python), and then compare the quality of them:

cap = cv2.VideoCapture(filename);
//get frame_number for saving, and save the frame
cap.set(cv2.CAP_PROP_POS_FRAMES,frame_no);
ret, frame = cap.read()

cv2.imwrite(dir_path+'uniform_frame_'+str(frame_no)+".png", frame);

Now I was wondering if I fetch an I-Frame, does it mean that it has a higher quality than other frames, e.g. P-frames and B-Frames? (inherently, keyframes are not compressed, so they must have higher quality and less noise).

"I, B and P" don't refer to the viewed frames, they refer to the encoded, stored forms of the frames. However the frame is encoded in the file or stream, when it appears on the screen or is extracted as a still it is a complete frame, reconstructed from the IBP information as needed.

I-frames are uncompressed frames and are what p and b frames reference to for compression. Yes I frames are higher quality.


Exported video doesn't look like the preview within Adobe Premiere I've edited some footage on Adobe premiere and did some color correction.

I applied some luts directly to my master clip to convert from Log to RGb, then I added a creative LUT in the Lumetri Color panel of the adjustment layer I created.

Once happy with the result I was having by playing my timeline, I selected the sequence, then did go to  File -> Export -> Media.

I selected the whole sequence and set some settings(basically, youtube export in 4K).

I check the preview, everything was fine.

But once the video rendering is finished, the video looks like if I didn't applied any LUTs(not sure, but it's the feeling).

What could I have done wrong?

Here is two screenshot:

Preview before export

Screenshot of the rendered result

It's the first time I have such kind of results, I applied in the past many LUTs and all went fine.

What could be wrong?

Be sure media encoder has the same LUTs in same order - otherwise it will take a different lut...

its a better way to browse to your lut in premiere - Media Encoder will use the same path and therefore doesn't screw up the correct lut.

Took a while for me to find out!

There could be a lot of reasons:

1.)  Your GPU settings; are they set to global for color for both VLC and PPro?
2.)  Have you opened Bridge; and used the the Edit - > Color Settings - Synchronize Button - and make sure you are using Web Standard sRGB?
3.)  Unfortunately; there is no way; and trust me it took me a long time to figure this problem out; to guarantee that what you see is what they will see (your end user); due the fact that:

Broswers, such as chrome; Ignore embedded color profiles.
Color Settings via GPU; and Video Color Settings; in your GPU control panel; may be adjusted differently; causing your video to appear differently.

4.)  Lastly; in VLC, which is what you are using to preview your output, ensure all your filters are turned off under preferences... Image Control Effects, Saturation, Hue, Etc. There may be something turned on there.

You want to make sure:

Bridge is synced across all Adobe programs;  GPU settings (assuming NVidia) is set to have programs use a specific "profile" which matches".  Having "Let the program decided" will provide mixed results based on various players.

Understand lastly; that the file you have output is compressed; and the player; whatever player it is; may simply not interpret the colormetrics the same; it may ignore color profiles; it may use it's own standard sRGB, or Adobe RGB, profile by default, it's really a crapshoot.

It's very much like broadcasting a "perfect signal" across cable. The home user - and their TV; can be set up a million different ways; Cinema Mode, Dynamic, Power Saver, Night Time; thus-- what you see going out, is unlikely what the viewer sees on their display.

Annoying. I know.


What video formats should I support (as of 2014)? I run a website that has offered downloadable instructional videos for 7 years. We have traditionally supported both mp4 and wmv formats.

I would like to simplify my life by just offering one format if possible. Do I still need to support wmv format? Or is this still an issue?

If I could support one format, which would it be?

Thanks

MP4/h264 is widely supported today. I'd even say it's the most supported video format since the existence of digital video (without having actual statistics to back that claim).
There is really no reason to deliver .wmv anymore when targeting a multi platform audience, the version of Windows Media Player that came with XP doesn't support MP4 but newer versions definitely do and the market share for that version should be very very low. Most users have adopted third-party players like VLC and even companies usually install at least one third-party video player on their computers that will very very likely support MP4. MP4/h264 has wide hardware playback support (unlike wmv and its possible codecs) and runs without any issues on any platform (unlike wmv).

So yes, in my opinion it's absolutely safe to only deliver MP4 videos as long as they are properly encoded. Using Level 3(.1) would be a safe bet, its supported by practically any software and hardware that is capable of playing MP4/h264.

If you deliver for web it is also a good practice to also deliver a .webm encode as well. If it only targets local playback I would still stick to mp4/h264. While we now have h265 it is very badly supported in comparison.
It will probably take another 8-10 years until we have the same rate of consumer adoption.

Anything playing on an old iPad 1 will work on most probably any device.

I think "main profile" was important when encoding, check for details here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/sp580

And always try on a real device ;)


Create cuts automatically by audio wave form in Premiere Pro CC I always cut my videos of the trips I'm doing. And I noticed that it is often the same that I cut out the parts where nothing is said and keep only the parts where somebody is talking.
Is there a plugin or a way in Premiere Pro CC to automatically create the cuts in a sequence where the audio changes from a lower to a higher value than a certain threshold?

Not that I've heard of, however, you could add Dynamics / Compression to your audio track and essentially compress out the low gain sections.

On your Audio Mixer Window, drop down the the filter section at top for the track all your audio resides on.

You will want to add Compression, not Expansion. Add some Gain MarkUp, 5-10 dB. Check Limiter, set to -2 dB.  Then adjust the ratio/gate/threshold so that the compressor will do as follows:

Add 5-10 dB of Gain to the entire track; depending on your source, you'll need to adjust that by levels/ear.

The gate/ratio will then if set correctly, only allow anything "Above" "X dB" to pass through the threshhold.

Loud sounds will be MarkUped as well, however, the compressor will not overmodulate if you adjust correctly and use the Limiter.

So if your video is nothing but low "breeze" noise, it will be cut to zero. Audio will need to "pass" the threshhold, and the attack setting will adjust how fast it allows passable audio to become audible and how fast it closes the gate after the audio falls below threshhold.

It sounds more complicated than it really is. If you follow the steps, play with the settings, you'll get it.

The filter is called DYNAMICS


Does using component cable help improve video quality? I have a standard definition (SD) set top box which has three jacks for its output(Red,white,yellow). I recently bought a Sony TV which has WXGA (1280x800) resolution and 5 jacks for input which has "Component IN" written near the input. I was wondering that , if I use a component cable as a replacement for my existing Red,White,Yellow cable (using the same SetTopBox), will it help to improve the picture quality. The current video quality is not too sharp and has significant motion-blur. I am asking this since the Sony installation guy told me a component cable will provide a better output keeping the same set top box.

It won't make a difference because your box is SD. No amount of signal inserted in it would make it look HD. To show HD, you need HD ready equipment.


Moving Multiple Layers on Timeline This is probably a simple question, but I do not think I know the terminology to search for it.

All I want to do is move the start point of multiple layers forward without changing the sequence of them. I've tried all the features I can find to do this, but it always changes the sequence.

The first thing I tried was selecting the layers I wanted to move and then:

Animation >> Keyframe Assistant >> sequence layers
In the dialogue box, I left overlap unchecked and hit ok, this failed to do anything
In the dialogue box again, I checked overlap and tried all of the features, each time it changed the sequence of the layers

Next I tried

Moving the timeline indicators to where I wanted it
Choosing the option + open bracket key
This only seemed to change one layer, so I just undid it.

All I'm doing is trying to add one simple slide into a slide show and move all the slides after it, but it appears like I'm going to have to sequence every layer again, which is hard to believe that there would not be a simple way of moving everything forward without changing the sequence order.

There are lots of add-ons that help with stacking and layering in the way you describe - try pt_shiftlayers for example:

https://aescripts.com/pt_shiftlayers/


Use Streaming Online Video/Live As Source In OBS Studio Is this possible?

Use others or your own Facebook or YouTube live stream as source in obs or any broadcast software and then broadcast it on another page or channel.

This would be possible using OBS's BrowserSource.

First, find the embed code for the stream (in YouTube you can click "Share" and then "Embed"). Find the src="" and copy the URL that's inside the quotes. In OBS, create a new Browser. Paste the previously copied URL into the URL field, and set the Width and Height to your canvas size (or your preferred size).

If you need to press a play button, you can right-click the Browser and click Interact.

I hope this helps!

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

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

Voilá! The video plays in the VLC source.


What deinterlacing filter should I use to encode/compress a PAL MPEG-2 576i 25fps raw file? I have a PAL MPEG-2 576i 25fps raw capture (presumably either straight from satellite or a DVD recorder) that I would like to encode to AVC.  I'd like to deinterlace the file during compression with either ffmpeg or some other tool (maybe a frontend like Handbrake?).

What deinterlacing filter should I use with PAL 576i raw footage?

I don't agree that the other answer is a good idea in general, because "-vf yadif" will drop half the frames, thus resulting in a poor substitute of the original footage. Here is the thing: 576i25 means that you have 50 interlaced fields per second, rendering motion of objects fluid and natural to the human eye. You can get a high speed video at 50 frames per second easily by means of this:

ffmpeg -i in.mpg -vf yadif=1 out.mp4

Please note the difference, i.e. yadif=1 is specified. If you don't give a value, the yadif filter defaults to yadif=0 which cuts the frame rate of TV footage in 2.

Some people think that, because 25 fps is close to the theatrical movie speed (24p), the resulting video should look better, right?. Big mistake. The director of any project for TV had in mind that the target medium was TV and acted accordingly, using different techniques and taking a different artistic approach, allowing for instance a lot of fast movement, pan and zoom, or a hand-held camera to give a more subjective point of view. Also, a higher shutter speed is usual in TV without producing the nasty stroboscopic look because the frame rate is high. But later, when that footage gets converted to half frame rate the result is not "cinema look" but simply bad TV footage with stroboscopic movement.

The same as with any interlaced footage: yadif

ffmpeg -i in.mpg -vf yadif out.mp4

(I've skipped the encoding parameters)


Is there an automated process to split a video into sections with motion? I have some video files with a reasonably static background and the occasional movement in the scene.  I would like to edit down the footage to just the sections with movement in.  As there are several hours of footage I would rather not do it by hand.

I hoped to find a script or utility that I could pipe the media into and get segments with motion out the other side.  My limited searching has not suggested anything that could do this, unless I can get VLC to use its motion filter somehow to tag things.

I would rather use a free or FOS system, as I am cheap.  If that is not an option then I will consider paying.  I am happy for the software to be Windows or Linux based.  I would rather not dump all the frames as stills, run a diff and re-encode but if that is the only way then I can probably work with that.  I can do coding in C, C++, Ruby and a couple of other scripting languages if pushed.  I don't mind spending a bit of time to write something if nothing is available and others might find it helpful.  I don't have a background in media processing though, so although I understand the concepts I would be rather lost at picking libraries to use as a starting point and so on.

Video is of a bird feeder with a hedge and fence behind it.  There is some slow shadow travel as the sun moves but otherwise the background seems stable.  I think about 5% of the frame will be filled by the movement I need to pick up on.  I only mention that because I have setup ZoneMinder motion capture in the past so I am familiar with its filter settings.

Even if someone cannot give me a complete answer, I would be grateful to some hints, suggestions and keywords that help me carry this forward.

There is a similar question in stack overflow

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28320004/detect-if-video-file-contains-movement

Apart from OpenCV they also suggest SimpleCV http://simplecv.org/
and "Motion" http://www.lavrsen.dk/foswiki/bin/view/Motion/WebHome


YouTube's 60fps runs smoother than games? When watching a video on YouTube in 1080p 60 FPS the video runs very smooth and looks nice. When I play games on my PC with more than 60 FPS it does not feel as nice.

Is there a difference between YouTube's 60fps and 'actual' 60fps?

If you're comparing PC games to Youtube video shot with a camera (as opposed to Youtube video of games captured via HDMI), then you're probably noticing the natural motion blur that cameras introduce.  Gaming hardware can't reproduce this effect very well because it either has to render intermediate frames and blur them together or perform "optical flow" or vector-based analysis in real time.

If you are, however, asking about Youtube videos of video games (which presently comprise most of Youtube's 60p content), then my only suggestion is perhaps a performance difference between your machine and the ones in the videos.

60 fps videos on YouTube are progressive while many video games cheat with interlacing.

Another potential cause is the refresh rate of your monitor.  Most monitors refresh at 60Hz, meaning 60 times a second.  But because of the way GPUs cycle when rendering video games, you need a 120Hz monitor to appreciate 60 fps.


Renaming source files without breaking link in Premiere? So, I messed up and rushed into a project for work. Instead of giving my files good naming conventions, I worked off a generic file naming convention off the camera. Now I have many edits on premiere but if I want to rename my source files outside of premiere, I find I have to go one at a time.

Otherwise, if I batch rename them all at once I will have no idea what to relink to what in my project. I've searched and haven't found a solution other than renaming the files inside premiere and consolidating the project to copy to new location and selecting to rename media files to match clip names.

I don't like this solution because it means I'll have to use the new premiere files. Much appreciated.

I figured it out! It was super easy.

I used Adobe Bridge to batch rename. Very importantly, I left the preserve current filename in XMP metadata option checked.

BUT before clicking rename, I first clicked preview and exported the CSV file and saved it somewhere safe. This file will help you remember the original file name. In this instance I will know that file 001.png was renamed to 120.png. This is very important.

Now in Premiere, all your renamed files will go offline. If all your files in one location on your drive, this next step is very easy. Just link one file and if you can't remember what you renamed it to, the beauty is that you can quickly search your CSV file in many ways like excel. Then just relink your file to the renamed file that way. Premiere will recognize all your other renamed files because you preserved the XMP meta data. And that's it!

I'm afraid you're stuck where you're stuck. Doing a batch rename in bridge will break the links once you re-open the project in PPro... it's a shame they didn't offer a dynamic link for when doing batch renaming which kept the links in tact.

It is possible that using the Trim Project/Reduce Project (Trim for PPro / Reduce for AE) Feature would at the VERY least clear out the clutter. It would eliminate (not delete, just not compile into a new project folder on your disk) unused footage files - clips not in use I stress; and you would be only left with a new project folder that contains the footage/media which is actually used in sequences. Then, you could start working off of that new folder moving forward. Deleting unused/unneeded sequences would reduce this as well...

Chances are, you are only using a fraction of your clips; so this would be a away to at least minimize down the mess.

Then do a batch rename in Bridge on all your original assets, and re-import them into the new trimmed/reduced project.

I would recommend setting decent sized handles when you trim it down; because you may want to make changes to the clip in points and out points which ARE in use at this point.

That I think would be your best bet.


Why does audio have standard bit rates whereas video does not I got into live streaming recently and while I was reading up on encoding settings I noticed that even though there are rules of thumb, there doesn't seem to be a standard set of bit rates we could point to for various requirements of quality like audio (eg 96 128 192 224 etc).

Why is that? Wouldn't a standard set of numbers be handy? Am I looking at this the wrong way?

Thanks

Complexity is the main thing.  Because of how audio works, there tends to not be a whole lot of variation in the quality you get from a given bit rate.  While video often has frames that are very similar from one image to another, audio rarely has the exact same sound playing for a long period of time.

This lack of predictability in audio means that the compression ends up being similarly efficient between one clip and another, so the quality levels can be closely associated to a given bit rate.

Video on the other hand can be predictable or unpredictable.  Some videos sit on the same background for a long time with slow changes between scenes and large areas of similar color within those scenes.  Such videos can be compressed very heavily and maintain their quality since large areas of the same color that remain consistent over time compress very well.

Other videos may have lots of action on complex background with rapid cuts between shots.  Such video requires a much higher bitrate for the same quality because the rate of change within the video is much higher.

This distinction makes video unsuitable for "standard" bitrates because they are no guarantee of quality.  Instead, standard metrics are based around arbitrary, subjective quality levels of video.  Since there isn't a good concrete way to measure quality level, each company ends up using their own definition of what quality their videos are and use the balance of file size and quality to differentiate their offering.

The bitrate for music has to do with the way our brain perceives audio.

I won't go into detail, but for each bit you add to a sample, you lower the noise floor -6dB. This means, that there is definable sweet spot for when humans starts to enjoy listening because the fidelity of what we hear through the speakers is close enough to what we think we would hear if the original audio source was there with us.

I guess I'm not the only who has confused a lamp for a person in the dark, or been fooled by visual illusions.

Our brain is funny this way, and much more sensitive to audible distortion, than to visual.


What video codecs can provide "adaptive quality"? Background:

I am trying to compress lossless bluray tracks to a more storage friendly size without a huge loss in quality.

What I've been doing thus far:

Exploring compression options with ffmpeg. Mainly around h264 with the -crf argument.

Restrictions:

Linux and open source tools. Please don't suggest anything Apple/Microsoft specific.

Question:

Most of the options I see around compression involved bit rates or fixed output sizes. I am looking for a video codec that has more of a "quality threshold". I don't mind if more complex portions of the track require more bytes to deliver the same level of visual quality. Does anything like this exist?

Edit:

I am having good luck with the -qscale argument and libxvid. If I don't get any other suggestions, I'll just go with that.

You're on the right track with -crf and x264 (the best H.264 encoder), and it should provide the "quality threshold" that you're looking for. CRF is recommended if you want a certain output quality and output file size is of less importance. Conversely, performing a two-pass encode with -b:v is recommend if you are targeting a specific output file size and quality is of less importance.

Encoding HEVC/H.265 with x265 should follow the same basic guidelines. You'll generally get better compression in exchange for a longer encoding time.

1. Choose a preset

A preset is a collection of options that will provide a certain encoding speed:compression ratio. A slower preset will provide better compression (compression is quality per filesize). General usage is to use the slowest preset that you have patience for. Current presets in descending order of speed are: ultrafast, superfast, veryfast, faster, fast, medium, slow, slower, veryslow, placebo. Ignore placebo as it is a joke and a waste of time (it helps at most ~1%). If it's encoding too slowly then use a faster preset.

2. Choose a CRF value

The range for x264 is 0-51 where 0 is lossless, 23 is default, and 51 is worst possible. A lower value is a higher quality. A subjectively sane range is 18-28. Consider ~18 to be visually lossless: it should look the same as the input but it isn't technically lossless. Increasing the CRF value +6 is roughly half the bitrate while -6 is roughly twice the bitrate.

General usage is to choose the highest -crf value that still provides an acceptable quality. That is if the output looks good then try a higher value and if it looks bad then choose a lower value.

3. Encode

Use these settings for the rest of your videos. They should all end up with the same quality.

Example

ffmpeg -i input -c:v libx264 -preset slow -crf 22 -c:a copy output.mkv

Also see

FFmpeg Wiki: H.264
FFmpeg Wiki: H.265

Maybe this is going to be helpfull K-Lite Codec Pack
When you install there is pack of codecs so you can choose what best fits you.
This is the list of codecs:
• DirectShow video decoding filters:
- ffdshow [version 1.2.4475]
- LAV Video [version 0.51.3] (- Decoding of: H264, VC1 (progressive only), MPEG2, MPEG4-ASP, MS-MPEG4, MJPEG, VP8, RV40, WMV1/2/3)
- On2 VP7 [version 7.0.10.0]
- DScaler5 MPEG-2 decoder [version 0.0.6.0 IVTC mod]


What exactly is AVCHD? Is it a codec? I don't think so; I believe it uses MPEG4/H.264 for video and AC3 for audio.

Is it a container format? Doesn't seem to make a huge amount of sense; there are enough out there already and it's likely that a suitable one already exists.

Is it simply a specification that specifies a particular combination of pre-existing technologies? But this would imply that AVCHD files could also be called something else, like "MPEG4 container with H264/AC3 inside".

So what exactly does AVCHD mean?

I think this image from Wikipedia says it best:

AVCHD is not a codec, but it is also not just a container.

Just like "every other" container, AVCHD features:

Video streams
Audio streams
Subtitles

But in addition, for example:

Playlists
Menu presentation (like in a DVD)

  Is it simply a specification that specifies a particular combination of pre-existing technologies?

Yes.

  But this would imply that AVCHD files could also be called something else, like "MPEG4 container with H264/AC3 inside".

But who would like to call it that? Several other specifications take already existing specifications, remix them, and they aren't called "Open Source Container format for XYZ".

I think it's a "one format fits it all" mentality, which is why you'll find AVCHD on many consumer devices.

AVCHD is basically just a consumer name for H.264, which in turn is another name for the ISO standard MPEG-4, Layer 10. It is one of the most significant steps forward in video encoding in recent times.

To the very best of my knowledge, it is a codec since it is used to encode and decode video but it is also a specification.


What codec do I need for this video file? I have a video file from my Hikvision NVR which I cannot play on Windows 10 in either VLC or Windows Media Player - all I get is a black video and the seek bar just whizzes along...

I can play this video in VLC on Windows 7 so I'm pretty sure it has something to do with the fact that it is a new computer.

Media Info gives me the following:

Complete name               : C:\Users\cos\Web\PlaybackFiles\2018-07-18\192.168.1.250_02_20180718224704172.mp4
Format                      : MPEG-PS
File size                   : 3.40 MiB
Duration                    : 1 min 51 s
Overall bit rate            : 257 kb/s
FileExtension_Invalid       : mpeg mpg m2p vob pss evo

Video
ID                          : 224 (0xE0)
Format                      : AVC
Format/Info                 : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile              : Main@L5
Format settings             : CABAC / 2 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC      : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames   : 2 frames
Duration                    : 1 min 51 s
Width                       : 2 560 pixels
Height                      : 1 440 pixels
Display aspect ratio        : 16:9
Color space                 : YUV
Chroma subsampling          : 4:2:0
Bit depth                   : 8 bits
Scan type                   : Progressive
Color range                 : Full
Color primaries             : BT.709
Transfer characteristics    : BT.709
Matrix coefficients         : BT.709

Audio
ID                          : 192 (0xC0)
Format                      : MPEG Audio
Duration                    : 1 min 51 s
Compression mode            : Lossy
Delay relative to video     : -5 min 7 s

Text
ID                          : 189 (0xBD)
Format                      : RLE
Format/Info                 : Run-length encoding
Duration                    : 1 min 41 s

I'm sure this is a codec, or perhaps lack of codec, issue but I need some help to determine what the cause of the issue is.

Has anyone experienced thisbefore?

There is hardly any video in your AVC file. The data rate is 0.2Mb and the frame is a full size PC desktop resolution (WQHD) instead of a  "real" video resolution such as 1920x1080.
Based on its size, I'd guess you only have 2 frames in there. That would be stretching a bit if you need a real video file. A low bandwidth (25Mb) AVC source of this size would be 100x bigger.

Try using a standard HD res at the source, a bigger bitrate and more key frames.


What kind of external microphone can I use with my Galaxy smartphone? I'm feeling a bit stupid.

I want to make video podcasts using my Samsung Galaxy S3 but of course the internal mic isn't much good.

So i need an external mic.

Can I use pretty much any battery-powered mic and plug it into my phone (maybe needs an adapter?)

I bought an Edutige ETM 001 but it wasn't compatible. I'm told i need an Edutige EIM 001 but I'm in Asia at the moment and can't find one here...

I'd be grateful for your help!

Consider a couple of products from Australian microphone maker Røde.

Røde VideoMic Me: http://en.rode.com/microphones/videomicme
Røde smartLav+: http://en.rode.com/microphones/smartlav-plus

Røde makes pretty high-quality products and are leaders in making new products like these mcicrophones which are designed to plug directly into the TRRS connectors of smartphones.

I have no connection with Røde except as a satisfied, paying customer.

I think you can probably get any microphone that can go into an audio slot.


Start and stop capturing while video is playing I have a long video that I am trying to shorten.  I want to be able to play through the video and, while it is playing, select the points at which I want to start and end my clips.

I want to do this for multiple clips until I play to the end of my video without having to stop.  Some of my clips will be very short shots so it needs to be fast enough for that.

In the end I should have a shorter version of my video composed of all the pieces I've sliced.  This way I can quickly achieve a first draft of my edited video.  Later I can slowly improve it and fix all of my mistakes.

I would like to know how to do this with Premiere. If it is not possible, do you know any other editing software that can do this?

There are two main way I can think of to do this, the first, which requires a little work after the fact, but certainly won't interrupt your play back, is to set marker points as you watch through the timeline.  Put the entire video in the timeline and then use the M key to place timeline markers at each point you wish to make a cut.  After watching through, you can place razor cuts on each marker and ripple delete every other section.

The other option, which I'm not sure if it will work without interrupting playback or not, is to set in and out points using shortcut keys.  I will set an in point, O will set an outpoint and Ctrl-K to add the edit to the timeline.  If that does end up interrupting playback, there is one other option that might work indirectly.

You could also try using a multi-cam edit with nothing on the second track.  This would let you monitor what is on your main playback and you could cut to and away from it whenever you like.  At the end you would just have to remove the empty space and get rid of the other track.

I'm not professional video editor familiar with Premiere but I know your requirements can be met by some simple video editing software I recommended here: Simple Video Editing Tool?
Here are the solution steps I recommend for you. I won't recommend the best video editing here, but you can pick up anyone (most of them can achieve it as long as it has "Split" and "Delete" function.)

Firstly, download any of free simple video editing software in your
PC as per different version.
Secondly, Import the video you want to edit and then drag to the
timeline (or other editing area like board).
Thirdly, Play your video in preview windows and click "Stop" in the
first clip you want to second-editing. Now use the simple but
powerful "Split" button, which is always designed to "scissors".
(Let's set it as point 1)
Fourthly, continue to preview the video and stop in the end of the
first clip you want to second-editing. Use "Split" again. (Let's set
it as point 2)
Fifthly, Then continue to find the third "Split" point for your next
clips you want to second-editing (Let's set it as point 3) and end
with point 4 as the end of your second clip
Sixthly, now you need to use "Delete" function which is can delete
the clips you don't need (the part from point 2 to point 3) in
further editing.

Then repeat the steps from 3-5, you will get multiple clips you need to second editing.
To this point, you have 2 options:

Save all those clips in your PC (which will merge to the whole video
automatically) and then edit them later with more professional video
program.
Zoom in/out all those clips to further editing in this simple video
editing software with other functions. I may need more details about
your questions to solve your further problems.
Check the image below to get more intuitive understanding.


Keyboard shortcut for "Add clip to conversion list" in GoPro Studio? Cutting videoclips in GoPro studio is pretty easy:

Press I for Mark In, O for Mark Out and Space for pause/continue. Editing a video would be pretty much faster, if a keyboard shortcut could be also used to add a videoclip to the conversion list, instead of clicking the button with mouse.

Is there a shortcut for the "Add clip to a conversion list", or is it possible to somehow make one? The answer can include usage of third-party programs such as Autohotkey etc.

My operating system is Windows 7.

If you google GoPro Keyboard Cover there is a skin with all the shortcuts on it - from GoCam Accessories I think it's called.

Edit: Just realised I could paste a link:

http://www.gocamaccessories.com/shop/gopro-studio-keyboard-cover-for-macs/


What PC software offers speeding up video & sound together at 20x+? I'm new to video editing, and I'm trying to find the right software to fit my needs.  I am interesting in creating videos where I want to speed up both the video and the sound together to rates of over 20x.

For example, here is the link to a YouTube video that is similiar to the style movie that I want to make.  This person used iMovie to create this video.

I started with the standard GoPro Studio, but whenever you speed up video with that program, the sound is lost.

I then moved to CyberLink Power Director, and with that program, the sound is not able to be sped up over 8x I believe when attached to the video.

I heard about Sony Video Studio, but it looks like you can't speed up the video past 4x in that program.

I do not want to break the sound apart from the video and try an pair it back up after speed up both the sound and video individually.  I also do not want to speed up the video/sound a small around, render the video, and then speed it up again, as that create a lot of redundant work.

Ideally, I would like to find the PC version of something like iMovie that has this capability.

I think Premiere can easily reach 80x. And you can go past that putting sequences one into the other

Almost every professional video suite can do it. Try premiere pro.


Video with person 'writing on glass' effect I'm trying to find someone who can make videos similar to one shown here:

At 49 seconds, the actress writes on glass to explain the concept.

Does someone know what this effect is called so I know what to ask for?

Also, if you know how to do this sort of thing, please reply.

Thanks so much,

There is a much better way to do that. That example video is a pretty poor illusion.

It can be done "for real" with with real light. But it looks
different. It has to be dark.
You can use motion tracking to create an animation path.
You can also use manual key frames. There are lots of tutes on the intertubes about that. Here is one:

Based on this video

I kind of figured it out how he did that. But the fact that I found this forum is because I thought it was amazing.
I think the way he made the video is

record behind a glass
draw on the glass like a whiteboard
flip the video.


How to digitise old NTSC home videos for highest quality (with PAL player)? I have some old VHS home videos that I'd like to digitise to preserve them, and I'm looking for the "best" way to do that with my setup. The videos were recorded around 1990, in the USA. I'd say they are in NTSC format, but I've also heard that VHS don't have NTSC or PAL, so I'm not sure. They play on my PAL VHS device, even in color. I am guessing that it converts the video to PAL60 for playback. The colors are slightly dull, but I don't know whether this is a feature of the camera, the old tapes, or any conversion. Another issue is that there is a bit of clipping in very bright/dark areas, but I think nothing can be done about that.

What I have right now is the following: German (PAL) VHS with the old tapes, connected via SCART->white-red-yellow cables to  generic USB digitalization device, connected to the computer.

A couple of questions:

The documentation of the USB device says that a S-Video cable will improve the quality, should I use one?
Would I get a big improvement from using a different VHS player? NTSC devices are hard to come by here and probably pretty expensive. I found that sometimes the USB device or its driver corrects the colors (that I assume suffer from the NTSC/PAL thing), but I'm not sure whats going on there.
While I'm at it: the signal seems interlaced. I was planning on recording it via VirtualDub, and then possibly deinterlacing it. A test worked pretty well, and removed any jaggy artifacts. I can generate 60Hz, but I've read that I should either not deinterlace it or convert it to 30 Hz.

For VHS, the signal will be kept highest quality if you connect via s-video, so yes, you should use an s-video cable if your VCR has an s-video output.

Depending on how good your VCR is, you may get a significant improvement from a better deck.  Quality of the read heads on various VCRs can vary a fair bit and while the majority of the difference was in recording quality, there were difference in playback quality as well.  That said, finding a good VHS deck in good condition is probably difficult these days.

I'm not sure about the color correction, most likely it is something specific to your capture device.

The signal is most certainly interlaced.  Both NTSC and PAL were interlaced formats.  NTSC video should be 29.97 frames per second.  That is the NTSC standard.  The resolution should ideally be 720 by 480 using oval pixels with a .9 pixel compression.

You didn't ask about it specifically, but using a DV codec should give the maximum quality though it will also be quite large.  Once you have a DV codec capture of the VHS tape, then using a traditional 2 pass transcode to either h.264 (viewing on computer or blu-ray) or MPEG-2 (DVD) should work well.

Get the video into some kind of file (digitize) like avi or mpeg. Use DVD flick to burn it to dvd disk, its free and can convert NTSC and Pal playable disks. Honestech made a $10 box (Bought at BigLots) to usb converter that converts VHS to DVD it makes them fit a 4.7 gig single layer disk (new $79 USD). No brainer. Since VHS is 640 x 480 its low rez compared to most types today. I'm in the USA and convert to UK to send to relatives,never had an issue with either method.


Ideal video format for Windows Movie Maker Windows Movie Maker is very slow in converting from MP4 to whatever it's using as its preferred/interim format. What is their preferred format, so I can convert to it using faster and/or GPU accelerated programs?

I've somewhat ruled out WMV, however, I converted the video to it, and WMM is processing it a good amount faster.

What is the ideal format to use for movie maker for importing video?

55 hours of video to encode/process with microsoft "technology" is not fun!

Windows Movie Maker, being a Microsoft product, works with WMV files using the Windows Media Video codecs.  You can use the free Windows Media Encoder to encode the files.  I believe there is also a free version of Microsoft Expression Encoder that you could use as well.  Expression is a bit newer, but slightly less capable since they moved a lot of functionality to the commercial Expression Encoder Pro (the Pro version is unfortunately not free).

Poking around in the cache files, it appears that its ideal format is actually MP4. This matches my observations on CPU usage when using a non-mp4 format.


Why have offset camera placement? I've noted in recent times that many YouTube videos show a single person not always speaking directly at the camera. I understand from my limited experience to video production many years ago that looking directly at the camera presents "eye contact" between the presenter and the viewer.

In the case of an interview or in a video with multiple subjects engaged in conversation, having a camera out of line with the face of a particular subject  provides for a broader presentation, which can be useful in demonstration type videos.

I've done a few searches to this SE, finding it difficult to determine search terms. The answer presented in the closed question:
Why use different camera angles?
provides a confirmation of the information in the previous paragraph, in that there is more than one subject involved in the video.

It is disconcerting to see a camera shot from the 2 o'clock perspective (or any angle other than straight ahead) of the presenter speaking to the viewing audience, but not looking at the viewing audience.

I have not found a rationale for this camera position and suspect that it does not belong in any videos of my own creation or in those in which I will be involved.

This may sound like a rant, but it's a search for understanding ostensibly to prevent a future gaffe. It's possible, I suppose that it's a new presentation feature and should be included?

By request and from the camera view, directly to the camera:

Same video, from a camera placed off-line:

The video is of a doctor presenting information regarding the Corona Virus from YouTube. It starts a few seconds before the camera placement switch.

It can be used with different intentions, mainly to give the footage more dynamism.

The off-camera look gives the impression to be filmed like an interview, with an interlocutor in front of the presenter but off-camera.

Of course in this example there is no interlocutor, it is the camera, so it can make the impression of combining some "behind the scenes" footage. It adds a bit of "production value".

Sometimes the second camera does not film the person's face, probably the hands, probably the full body, and sometimes the interviewer, again not present in this case.

Probably a good option is using two off-camera angles.

It is simply a matter of style. Fortunately, the rules are not carved in stone.

One psychological effect from staring at the camera vs off camera angle is that the first one can feel like someone is "lecturing" you, trying to convincing you.

The second feels more like someone is just pointing at "facts" and you can decide or not to take them into account. That is why interviewed people do not look at the camera, but the presenter normally does.

This example probably tries to do both.

People do it when they have two cameras and feel compelled to use the second one to get their money’s worth, but don’t have any creative ideas about how to use it. Also common when you have a second tripod, but not a second cam-op. It’s a mistake that I think people make when they’re new to video (hey, I’ve done it!), and with more new videographers joining our ranks every day, and SME’s unintentionally lending credence to the practice, you’re likely to see more of it for a long time.