AE Error : Imager Buffers exceed internal limits. Decrease the memory requirements for the rendering of this frame. (12804) I'm kinda new to AE and having a weird issue while trying to render a 1920x1080 Composition.

After rendering about 10seconds, i get the following error:

I've checked all of my objects and i have no composition with the large dimensions mentioned in the error.

Did anyone ever bump into this error ? It would greatly help me to hear from the more experienced one.

Cheers,
Shai.

It would be good to know what OS your machine is running and if it's 32 or 64 bit, and the resources as in type of processor (Dual Core, i3, i7?) and how much DRAM is on the motherboard. I am not an After Effects user (yet) but this error appears to be a resource error, which is common to many other video editors.

It would also be helpful to have you describe what you are trying to render in AE. For instance how long is the piece, how many video tracks, what effects are used, etc.

Without knowing your computer's resources is not a show stopper, here are some items to check.

Are you running anything else when AE is trying to render, if so try your render again with nothing running but AE.

If you have a 32 bit machine you may have a 2GB limit on the RAM, which is going to be an issue. Have you tried this on a 64 bit machine with more memory?

What resources do you have AE using besides the requested render? For instance do you have the preview screen on 'auto' size mode, you might try to make the preview smaller and in a 1/4 or 1/2 mode so AE doesn't have to figure out each display frame size thereby freeing up some cycles.

This happens because of motion blur. Deactivate it or change the movement of your layers if they pass close to the camera.

Cheers.


How do I find out if a video is actual or if it was modified with a Software? This video in question is Chameleon Changing Color How do I find out if that color change in the Chameleon is real and not a modification that was done with software? Specifically, I am looking for some software I can use to conduct the analysis or a website that provides such services.

Chameleons do have some pretty wild colors they can change into, and the process is extremely advanced, requiring physicists and biologists to fully understand how it works; check out this video for how it works. Personal note: Something this advanced doesn't happen by random chance.
Anyway, my personal opinions aside, it appears to me, this video was heavily edited by software to get a bigger wow factor. I've edited photos and videos for the better part of 20 years and there are subtle markers that stand out to me.
The biggest tip-off, is at 2:06 into the video when the Chameleon changes blue. If you look carefully at the body, you will see a slight gray outline around the edge of the entire Chameleon, it is especially noticeable at the top of his back and the around his forward paw gripping the branch -- that is a not so subtle sign that a poorly made mask has been used to select an area for manipulation. Other tipoffs include the vibrancy of the colors and the purple/blue, and the whole body changing the same color, instead of patches changing color.
As for what software can do this, there are many. If it's a still image you can use Affinity photo, Gimp, or Photoshop. For video, the best (and free) is DaVinci Resolve is what I would recommend. It was specifically designed to do this kind of work!
For an example of how the change could have been done in software, check out this video or this one.
How it happens in Chamelons

How it's done is software

Before going too far, i don't think there is something on earth would like wasting energy to keep changing appearance for nothing, or do you think it knows it is on TV and know where the camera is? Come on!
Someone plz tells me i am wrong.


After Effects Alternative for Windows I use Sony Vegas for video production but would like to be able to create more visual effects.

Are there any cheaper alternatives for Adobe's After Effects? Or is there an extension for Vegas?

Blender does have compositing capability, and can be used to do some of the stuff that AE does. It's free, but you have to learn how to use it, so how highly you value your time counts in the final equation.

If you want to see Blender in action as a compositor you can see the "Tears of Steel" short film made with Blender last year.

NOT really  alternatives but you can look into these tools too..

Pinnacle Studio HD
Corel Video Studio Pro
Nova Cut (Open ,Distributed Editing)[NOTE: CHECK FOR WINDOWS COMPATIBILITY]

As i said, these are not Proper alternatives..

But many simple and at par professional level performance can be expected from these.  The first one, Pinnacle Studio HD, delivers a failrly good quality output and also supports extra features like Chroma Keying, Basic Color Grading and also has some additional Pligins available like the RED GIANT EFFECTS. I am not sure whether its capable of giving you what you need, but have a look . Here is the link to Pinnacle

Secondly, Corel® VideoStudio® Pro X5 is an all-in-one video editor that brings together creative editing, advanced effects, screen recording, interactive web video and total disc authoring. Ultra-fast and packed with intuitive tools, it lets you create everything from family movies and slideshows, to fun stop motion animations, and screen recordings of presentations, tutorials and more. Get creative with advanced compositing and stellar creative effects. Tap into the full power of your multi-core processor with unprecedented speed. And share everywhere with native HTML5 video support, and enhanced DVD and Blu-ray™ authoring as said in the official site. Here is the Link to the Product Have a look.

The third and slighlty interesting item is the Nova Cut Pro. (A free movement, still under development) . Warning: i am not sure about its capabilities and disabilities. But i have read from their blog that , it provides powerful solutions for distributed editing requirements. You can(should) take a look and go through their blogs before trying it.Good thing is it is (or was) free.. Have a look here , here and here


Remove audio from video annotation in ActivePresenter I've been creating screencasts lately (cut with real footage) with ActivePresenter.

ActivePresenter allows one to add "annotations" and they can be in various formats including both audio and video clips. I would like to overlay a video clip onto my screencast, but my issue is, I cannot mute or remove the audio from the video clip in ActivePresenter. When accessing the video's properties, there is a volume slider there but it is disabled.

I can remove the audio using a different tool, and then import into ActivePresenter, but I thought this would be pretty standard functionality. So, the question - is there a way to remove audio from a video annotation in ActivePresenter? The format of the video annotation is mp4 (I'll try with other various formats and see if there are formats which ActivePresenter will provide this as an option).

Yes, you can remove audio from any video in ActivePresenter. To do that, please follow the instruction in ActivePresenter's community:

  You just need to select the video, click Adjust Volume tool on the
  Timeline, and select Mute checkbox.

Besides acting as a professional Video and Audio Converter, iDealsahre VideoGo is also powerful Audio Remover which can remove audio or audio tracks from all kinds of video files on Mac or Windows.


Best format for audio track with a single/few images What would be the best (e.g. most compact) format for a "video" that is actually an audio track with a single static image the whole time? (example)

And if it was not one static image, but a slow slideshow (maybe 1 image every couple of minutes)?

EDIT
One more case: What if it is a short clip (1-2 seconds), that itself is full quality (I think that means 25 FPS, right?), but is played in a continuous loop throughout the entire audio?

The best compression would come from a variable frame rate format.  Variable Frame Rate formats are designed to adjust their frame rate based on the level of activity in the video.  For something with a very low effective framerate, this would allow it to store the image far fewer times and simply describe how long the image should stay up for.  It would then use more frames when necessary for any transitions.

The one downside to variable framerate formats is that there aren't a whole lot of well supported ones and even fewer good encoders to support working with them, but it is what would give the best results.

Handbrake appears to support VFR output.

Most video codecs lets you control the interval of what's called keyframes (or intra frames). Those are snapshots of the video, of which the codec will then try to interpolate lost data between. If you only need the image to change every x seconds, and you are OK with 1 second distortion/tween/morph/artifacts then simply set the keyframes interval to 1.

I'm not an expert (never tried what you want to do) but I think H.264/MPEG-4 would be a good match. Hope this helps!

If you have access to the player (if this is for an app you're making, or a website etc), you could try to mimic this behavior using just an image viewer for your platform and an audio player.


Fix bad files and streams with ffmpeg so VLC and other players would not crash It happened me many times that I could end up in corrupted video files:

video downloaded from official sources but with torrent and for some reason not all the pieces are there in .mkv, .ts or .mp4
records in .ts format where at a certain point the data is missing
copied videos from an old hard drive with damaged sectors

When I play this videos with VLC or other players they plays till a certain point and then instantly exits. Sometimes I can try to skip the bad part but I could meet another bad sector and have an insta-quit again.

Question is:

Can I fix this problems (I suppose stream and keyframes related) with ffmpeg and maybe in a -c copy fashion so I haven't to recompress everything?

What I want to achieve is a full lenght video where the missing parts are skipped, I prefer a glitch rather than having my videos crash.

If parts of the file reside on physically bad sectors, or for whatever reason, the OS cannot serve the whole file to FFmpeg, then naturally FFmpeg can't do anything about that. You should get a utility which can ignore those portions and write the salvageable parts to a new file, like ddrescue.

Now, if the file protocol is not the cause of errors, you can try

ffmpeg -err_detect ignore_err -i video.mkv -c copy video_fixed.mkv

I've tested lot of solutions and software. I love cli commands, so using ffmpeg you can fix your video file with no hassle. Try the next command if you came here searching some useful fix:
ffmpeg -vcodec mpeg4 -b:v 7561k -qscale:v 2 -acodec aac -ac 2 -async 1 -strict experimental ./video_fixed.mp4 -threads 0 -i damage_file.mp4

Good luck !


What happens to frames when you speed up a video clip? There is a 60 FPS video clip, with 1 Second total duration (So it has 60 frames, each 1/60s duration)

I make it 2× faster. So it's has a 0.5s total duration. How about frames?

How many frames are in my 0.5s video? 60 frames each 1/120s, or 30 each 1/60s?

In a tutorial the author says: "I recorded those images at 60 frames a second and time remapped the video to about 2-3x getting about 120-180 frames to work with."

I just wonder if speeding up (in this case time remapping) the video clip for 2x will result in removal of half of the frames, how the tutorial is saying it give you 120 frames to work with?

In the simplest case, half the frames -- every second frame, or all the even (or odd) numbered original frames -- are just gone, discarded. The frame rate of the resulting video does not change, it's still 60 fps.

It's possible to create a video where each new frame is a blend of two original frames but this is unusual and often not effective. Or in a field-based system where each original frame is composed of two distinct half vertical resolution images, you can discard half the fields instead of half the frames. But still, the result will be 60 fps.

If you were working in a 60 fps environment and imported a 30 fps clip, you could effectively double the frame rate of the original clip, but that isn't what you asked about.

When a 60 fps clip is sped up or slowed down, the frames are skipped or duplicated accordingly. For example if we speed up a 3 second video which has (3x60frames) 180 frames, the frames are dropped according to the speed up ratio. To be more clear, if you speed up your clip from 100% to 150%, the frames will be reduced by skipping automatically, giving a feeling that the clip is running faster now.

When we slow down a clip from 100% to lower than 100%, lets say 50%, the frames are duplicated at a specific interval to give a feeling that the clip is slower. To be more clear, if a 180frame 3sec video is slowed down to 50%, now it will have 360frames for 6sec.

No editing software has the magic power to create a new frame out of thin air. It can either drop frames or duplicate them.


Why can't add I Motion Graphics Templates to Premiere Pro 2020 Timeline So basically, the issue I am running into is as described in the subject. I am trying to add a motion graphics template that I made in Adobe After Effects 2020 and installed to Adobe Premiere Pro 2020. I simply can't add it. Premiere won't let me add it to the timeline. I've tried adding other templates that come with Premiere and those don't work either. I am really new to Adobe Premiere and other Adobe products so I must just not know something simple.
My basic system specs are: Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7700 CPU @ 3.60GHz, 3601 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s), OS Name Microsoft Windows 10 Home, Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 16.0 GB, Total Physical Memory 15.9 GB, Available Physical Memory 8.12 GB, Total Virtual Memory 25.6 GB, Available Virtual Memory 15.5 GB.
I have attached a link to a video file showing me trying to add the different templates and failing. Let me know if I should add anything else.
loom video link to me trying to add mogrts

I don't work with MOGRT too much but I assume this is similar to working with AEP comps that you live-edit within Premiere.
Try either dropping into the project first, then into timeline.
Try rolling back to last 'main' version of both AE and PP - so still using 2020 but e.g from 14.5 to 14.0 - often issues appear with PP/AE mismatch during small updates and dynamiclink can be unpredictable.
Hope this helps

Do exactly as shown
You need to create a new sequence
And drag and drop the motion graphics file into it


Convert HDMI video to Coaxial Antenna? I need to take an HDMI (unencrypted source) from a Sony video camera and send it via coaxial cables which are hooked directly to TVs wired throughout the building. I'd like to be able to tune into i.e. Channel 3 to tune into the video signal.

I've searched and the only solution I can find is an SDI to HDMI converter, but I'd rather not use that and would prefer to hook coax directly to the TV as below:

Camera (HDMI) --> [CONVERTER BOX??] ==coaxial==> TV
                                     |=========> TV
                                     `=========> TV  (etc)

Assuming you want digital channel 3, you can use an HDMI to QAM modulator, like this one or this one. You will need appropriate multiplexers, amplifiers, and splitters to combine your feed with your CATV provider and then distribute to the TVs.

If you need analog channel 3, then it is more complicated. You will probably first need to convert to SDI, then convert to analog video and audio, and finally feed an analog modulator.


Creating a split screen video of a multitrack recording It's fairly common to see videos in which, to accompany a piece of music created using overdubs, we see a split screen showing the artist performing each overdub.

What functions, in which software, may be used to create videos like this?

Is it a matter of mixing the audio separately, then manually synchronising the video, or is there software that automates the process?

Answers for any software are welcome, but budget answers (iMovie, Movie Maker) are welcome, as well as any software designed for this specialised purpose.

WAX is an freeware video editing program.

You can create a split screen effect with either a source image or AVI video file. Import then source files into the MediaPool (Project -> Insert Tracks) then position them on seperete layers on the timeline.

From the MediaPool change to the Plugin Presets tab and drag the desired split screen effects over the video/image you wish to apply.

[Full Size]

[Full Size]

I've shown an example above, in the second screenshot you can see I played with some of the settings to adjust the width of the split screen. You can also change the size and position of the video.

Vongplayer Windows store, 4 Videos splitscreen, record your first Movie than while playing at same time record the second. While both two Videos at same time sighting record the third. This way add the fourth. Genial, create your own band, miss this for iOS.


Premiere Pro issue with preview? I'm not a pro when it comes to Premiere Pro and just wanted to cut a training video for my job (without bigger animations or something like this).

The finished video is displayed correctly in the preview. But as soon as I export it, or create a new partial sequence from the whole video, the following happens:

The individual clips move in their cutting, or in other words — at some points a few frames are removed at the front, and at the back a few additional frames are shown (the length etc. remains the same). This of course shifts the whole sound and I can see frames in the video that should not be visible.

I don't use Premiere Pro, so I don't provide the step-by-step instruction, but I know the basis of your problem.

In your original (compressed) video they are so-called intra-frames (aka keyframes), which contains the full info about the particular frame, and other frames (inter-frames) which contain — simply said — only differences from the previous intra-frames.

In other words:

every intra-frame is independent of others frames, while
non-intra-frames are dependent on the nearest previous intra-frame
(and — maybe — from other frames, too).

Let suppose there is 1 intra-frame every 10 seconds (i.e. at time stamps 0 s, 10 s, 20 s, etc.),
and the “other” frames are between them.

Now, you want to cut the 20 s video from the time 13 s (i.e. the range 13 s – 33 s).

The frame at the position 13 s is not an intra-frame — it needs the previous intra-frame (at position 10 s) to obtain the full picture.

So your software simply adds the 3 s part from 10 s in front of your request, and cuts-off the last 3 seconds. The result will be a clip in the range 10 s — 30 s.

But the situation is not so desperate. You have to force Adobe Premiere Pro to re-encode the 13 – 33 s part of original video, i.e. to first compute the frame at position 13 s, then mark it as intra-frame, and make subsequent frames dependent of this new intra-frame.

How?

As I told, I don't know the exact answer. But you have to avoid enabling properties as “Direct Copy”, “Fast Copy”, “Without Re-encoding”, etc.

Change your export setting
and use the "frame sampling" option.


What makes iMovie 11 crash when exporting a project? I'm making a short movie with iMovie.

From time to time (more than once per day) I export it in medium format.

I did it with my last version, then I refined the video and when exporting again iMovie started crashing.

After lot of hacking, reading (this great post for instance, which gives multiple very useful solutions), I understood that the cause was some corrupted video.

I crashes probably in the part where I included some video produced with iMovie itself. So, I create a temp project with iMovie, and I export it to use the exported video in my MAIN project.

I removed it and now it works. If I include it again it sometimes crashes, and it is the weird thing:
I never changed this video, and when I include it again some time the project is exporting well, sometimes not (it seems a not-reproducible issue! crazy!).

Hence I have the following questions:

is it possible to 'repair' the video which make the project crash?
is there a way to understand, from the error report, WHICH WAS THE PART CAUSING THE CRASH?
iMovie is great but I think it is still somewaht a toy. So if I buy final cut pro x, can I import iMovie videos without getting crazy?

-- UPDATE --

The followings are not  possible solutions:

Removing the "organic" title (I'm not using it)
clean the preferences entry in the library folder (com.apple.iMovieApp.plist), I've already tried it

You can try to convert the defunct video to a different codec. Use something Lossless like ProRes, if you can, or Motion JPEG. Then put the clip back into your project.

I had this problem once in FCP7 for about a week. It didn't go away until I re-recorded that video (which was painful, but in my case, doable). I wouldn't suggest such a radical solution in your case though. There's a lot you can still try. Read the linked post. Basically what I did was: "circumvent or force media conversion at different production stages".

You can also open Console and take a look at the log when the app is crashing. That normally gives hints what is going on in the background.

I've solved the same problem by removing all animations of my introduction. I hope this is helpful for future problems.


Render settings for DVD in Vegas Pro I've been working on a video project and output should be for DVD.

Video from camera:
1920×1080; 50 fps

65 min. after cut

Software: Vegas Pro 12.0

I need to render it in the best quality possible, but on the other hand, I need it to be max. 4 GB big in size (because of DVD limitations).

Could you please give me advice for best render settings and format choice?

Use variable bitrate to cut down on filesize
4 GB / 65 min = 8.2 Mb/s which is in the norm for DVD quality so fixed bitrate should be fine

Your DVD authoring software should do this automatically. If you’ve got DNxHD (cross platform free) use something in the middle or higher range codecs. Take that nice HD file & let the software crunch it into the needed mpeg TS file.

As for the DVD spec it’s mpeg2 either PAL 720x576 interlaced 25fps or NTSC 720x480 interlaced both are upper field first. If your exporting from a lower field first source like dv pal deinterlace befoe export. The bit rate is technically 10mbps but you need to leave 1mbps for audio (. Remember to encode your DVD audio to ac3 to maximise the bit rate available for video. Also use a 2 pass Variable Bit Rate for best results.


Is there a good collection of examples of the different type of video cuts? So I'm a beginner when it comes to video editing, but I hear and read about a lot of different types of cuts between clips, e.g. jump cut, smash cut, etc. I always felt it would be great to just see them demonstrated in some example video clip.

Have anyone seen such a resource, preferrably free, online, where most or all of these types of cuts are shown in examples?

Wikipedia is not a bad resource for explaining the different types of edits in continuity editing. Some have examples using stills of the out and in points, or references to usage of the edit in a well known film sequence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuity_editing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/180-degree_rule
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/30-degree_rule
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_cut
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-cutting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutaway_(filmmaking)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutting_on_action
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Establishing_shot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyeline_match
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insert_(filmmaking)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L_cut
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_take
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Match_cut
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot_reverse_shot

Try to use Avidemux as free video cutting and joining software. Also try freemake video converter is quality software to convert multimedia files.


What hardware/software to get fastest possible access time in AVC/h264 files? Sometimes I watch a video that I don't want to see from beginning to the end, but only some parts. Sometimes I need to quickly find some scene/spot in a video. The less keyframes there are, the longer it takes to seek random place in a video.

What hardware/software configuration I need to make seeking time as fast as possible?

I mean if I to build a new PC, what hardware is there to get fast access time by fast decoding?

If its just about playback, I can highly recommend Media Player Classic HC for Windows. I think I haven't seen a faster player so far. It utilizes DirectX 9 for most image rendering which results in a lot faster playback on many machines. Most players only uitilize the CPU for drawing.
Even uncompressed avi's had a lag free playback and fast seeking times from a USB 2.0 hard drive. The player is very good at caching aswell which should give you a benfit with files that have keyframes that are far apart from each other. It also has the option to always skip to the next keyframe when seeking (Options/Tweaks/Fast Seek). It also has a setting for the jump distance when seeking very long videos.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mpc-hc/

Generally for all plattforms recommendable is mplayer with a fitting GUI (there are quite a few of them out there for Windows/Mac/Linux). A little "geeky" but very powerfull.
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html

You dont need RAID storage to seek through h.264 files fast. That only applies to really huge "raw" video files that are meant for editing. A video card that has MPEG-4 decoding supported would be good to have but normally any video card from the last 4-5 years supports that. Apart from that you dont need any special hardware, your problem is mainly a software issue.

On the hardware side, I would recommend a RAID storage system, that you can assemble with smaller, cheaper hard drives. With this you will have a large overall capacity, fast read performance, and depending on the RAID level your data is also protected against hard drive failures. One negative aspect is the additional noise of the hard drives.


Best Lossless Video Encoder For Editing I'm looking for a good video encoder to compress HD files for editing within Sony Vegas Pro and Adobe After Effects.

What video codec would provide the fastest possible encoding and decoding? Also, what are some recommended encoding settings?

The video files must be usable in Sony Vegas Pro and Adobe After Effects.

EDIT: Source Clip Info:

Format                           : AVC
Format/Info                      : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                   : High@L5.1
Format settings, CABAC           : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames        : 8 frames
Bit rate                         : 4 334 Kbps
Width                            : 1 920 pixels
Height                           : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio             : 16:9
Frame rate                       : 23.976 fps
Color space                      : YUV
Chroma subsampling               : 4:2:0
Bit depth                        : 8 bits
Scan type                        : Progressive

The container is Matroska.

I'll start by pointing you to another answer I wrote before, roughly covering the different kinds of codecs.

(Nice edit on your question, by the way, removing the file size limitation helped figure out what you were after.)

My recommendation (again) will be to either use ProRes 422 or Cineform as your intermediate, probably via Magic Bullet Grinder or GoPro Cineform Studio respectively.

Either of these codecs will give you good decoding speed, and both will work with Vegas and After Effects.  Any workflow that involves transcoding and not capturing natively to your editing codec (such as with ProRes on an Arri Alexa or a Cinedeck), is going to sacrifice time for processing, but in your case, it seems like that's a necessity.

.mp4 always works for me.  If you are using Sony Vegas to compress it, then there should be an option to compress it as an AVCHD option, which can be one of several formats.  The best one to use would be .mp4.  It makes the file much smaller while still losing next to no quality.  (I've had 45 minute HD videos, cut to under 1gb, but it depends on how long the video is, and how many cuts there are.)  Usually that mp4 file can be read by most other programs.  I'm not sure about after effects, but I believe it can at least be read by premier.

Just a note of caution, there is more than one mp4 file type.  You want the one that is categorized under AVCHD, not the regular one, and not the one in caps (MP4 as apposed to mp4).

Once you've selected AVCHD you can change the file type by using the "custom" button, or you can just type in ".mp4" at the end of the file name, and it will do it for you.


.mov file choppy when played back in premiere pro cc I made a screen recording using quicktime, but when I import the video into premier pro cc, the playback is choppy.  In on part of the video I have an object that fades in, when this is viewed in quicktime the fade is very gradual and smooth, but in premiere pro it is choppy as if I only get every other frame of the fade.

This could be a result of a very high resolution video and a slow computer. Try rendering the footage and see if it is still choppy

I found a way to fix this problem if you are here today and accidentally or unknowingly recorded using hevc or having trouble with playback .mov
Download reNamer by den4b and try replacing the .mov file with .m4a (note: .m4a not .mp4) i tried other file format like flv, avi none worked with Premiere
Its been almost 5 years Adobe!
Hope it works for you :)


Adding voiceover without video recompression I have some mp4 video files with pretty poor video quality. I need to add a voiceover translation. I have seen some video software programs that could do the job but unfortunately most of these programs recompress also the video stream, so it becomes worse.

Is there any (preferably, free) software, which would allow me to remix only audio part of my mp4 files and leave the video stream as is, without recompression?

Yes, it's possible. What you need to do is demux and remux. Check out free tools like VirtualDub and Any Video Converter to split the original into separate streams, add what you want using Audacity or similar, then re-multiplex them together using a tool like AviMux. The video can remain unchanged.

Short answer is no...in order to marry picture and sound, a new file needs to be created.

That being said, some software will allow you to edit the compression settings, and may have a setting to leave the video at "original quality" or "no compression" or "uncompressed". The latter may actually result in a larger file, as the file get decompressed and then re-saved with ALL the data intact instead of compressed.

Do some experimentation to see which option(s) work best with the software you have available. You can also download some free trial versions of software that are fully functional for 30 days before you get locked out. Most editing programs that allow tweaking of the video codec's options will work for you.


Record video to timeline during playback Is there a video editing software that allows you to record video from a tethered device (like a webcam) directly to the timeline while the project preview is playing back?  This would basically be like if Audacity also allowed video recording and editing.

I would like to be able to record video directly to the timeline at a specific time so that the video and audio will automatically match up rather than recording the video separately, importing it, dragging it to the timeline and trying to line it up.

DaVinci Resolve, Premiere, and FCPX all support direct video capture.  But depending on your hardware configuration, operating system, and camera, you will most likely need a video capture card or external capture device also.
Most computers don't come with a way to get video into them, they come with ways to get data into them.  HDMI ports are one-way, so you need an HDMI or SDI input, or a way to convert HDMI/SDI to data, and bring it in through USB, Thunderbolt, or PCIe, etc.  Webcams, whether internal or external will need a software driver to communicate to the NLE.  Generally, inbuilt webcams come with their own recording software, and computer manufacturers (hopefully) guard access to the camera. So for built-in webcams, you will need software which has access to your computer's hardware.  As Far as I know, FCPX can access FaceTime cameras, but Resolve and Premiere cannot.  For tethered ones, you'll need drivers supplied by the webcam manufacturer.

So basically a Live Broadcast program.

I think a better way is to use timecode. This will automatically line up your video and audio


How to use chroma key to replace design of complex object? For an upcoming shoot I need to create a classroom set, but I don't have access to the school tables I need to create the desired effect; instead, I was thinking about filming with simply IKEA tables painted in blue/with tracking markers and replacing with a 3D model. I've never tried anything like this before, nor do I have PP/AE (I mostly use Hitfilm basic and Blender, + Fusion 360 for 3D modelling (my only paid software)), but I need the actors to interact with the table, placing objects on it, etc. so I can't just superimpose the model over a blank plate.

I'm mostly trying to find the most fail-safe way over necessarily the easiest, although I don't exactly want to spend much money, hence why the chroma key solution looks appealing. The end goal is to map the model onto the real table (which is of the same shape), not to use chroma key necessarily.

I was wondering if anyone has any experience with this sort of thing, and if so, I'd like to hear any potential pitfalls or advice about full-scale object replacement of this form (maybe chroma key is not the simplest method?). Advice on lighting the complex shape sufficiently, or placement of tracking markers, is also appreciated.

What you are thinking about is a very great way to save production costs and is used in many cases on many sets. Here is what your pipeline would look like:

Shoot the footage with green tables
Track the movement of the camera (using pfTrack preferably, but after effects can do the trick too)
Importing the tracked movement into any 3D-software such as blender
modeling the table so it fits the dimensions
moving the 3D-camera using the tracked data, so the 3d-camera matches the real camera.
rendering the sequence (preferably as an image sequence, such as .exr or .tiff)
importing the 3D-asset into the compositing-program (such as After Effects)
Keying out the green table and "replacing" it with the cgi table.

These steps are requiered only if you have a moving camera. If you don't, you can scrap points 2, 3 and 5. So if you want to save effort in the post-production, you can try to lock down your camera and put some artificial movement on your footage once it's composited.

Now, the tricky part is getting the shadows and the perspective right. Make sure to pack something like a grey-ball, or something matte and something shiny, so you can hold them in the frame to have a reference for later. You might need to fake the contact-shadows of the arms and hands when they are placed on the table. All of this is manageable from inside After-Effects though, no need to fire up heavy artillery like Nuke.

It might be false economy to try to do this in post. If you cost the time you will spend getting it to look halfway decent, it might work out a lot more expensive than going to your local furniture dealer or antiques shop and asking if you can borrow / rent a desk that looks like what you actually want.

A lot of smaller shop owners are happy for the publicity and will loan stock items for short periods in return for credits, or let you rent items, particularly things like antiques and second-hand goods. This is a pretty standard thing to do for indie film-makers, and I think will probably work out a lot more convincing than trying to do it with 3D.


How to make sense of video file formats? In digital video, there are all these different kinds of files: m4v, mov, mkv, mts, mp4, mpeg, and a host of others, and I can't seem to find a clear answer as to what each is good for.

(By contrast, when you're taking still pictures, you have two choices: JPG or RAW; with JPG, you basically know what the file contains, and with RAW, it's going to vary by camera manufacturer. I know it's a little more complicated than that, but it's nothing like the explosion of options available in digital video.)

Furthermore, it seems like the video's file extension doesn't tell you what's inside the file. From what I understand, a .mov file (for example) could contain just about anything.

Then there is this whole thing about h.264, AIC, ProRes, iFrame, AVCHD, DV, HDV -- at least I think those all belong to the same category, but I'm probably mistaken.

Can anyone help me understand all the different variables that are in play here so that I can make intelligent choices about what I do with the files coming off my camcorder?

File formats are essentially wrappers, a container of sorts. The video information is encoded in a codec (Coder/Decoder). Some file formats only work with certain codecs. This is due (in part) to corporate/organizational pissing contests (or format wars - remember dvd+ vs. dvd -?). Codecs come with varying degrees of compression. The more compressed a codec is, the smaller your files will be, but they will also potentially be losing information, in the same way that a RAW file saves everything from CCD, and JPEG compresses the file by dropping repeated information. Also, most pro level NLEs (like Final Cut Pro (not FCPX)) play nicer with codecs that are less compressed. The more compressed it is the more the computer has to work to decode and re-enconde the information when you make changes (moving on the time line, cutting, adding effects etc.)

Recommendations:
For recording and editing (HD), pick a low compression, high quality codec such as DVCProHD, AVCHD, Apple ProRes.

To export for sharing I recommend H.264. It is supported nearly universally and is very good quality with relatively small files. BluRay videos are actually encoded in an ultra high quality H.264

One other note: if your camcorder saves files in a weird format (ie. not mov, mpeg, mp4), you will need to use a transfer process in your NLE. Be sure to save the ENTIRE folder structure from your memory card, not just the mts, mxf, or whatever files.

More tips: if you're not sure what codec a file is in, you can open it in QuickTime and hit cmd+i to open the inspector window. It will have all the codec information there.
Additionally, on Windows there is a small utility called G-SPOT which can show you what codec are you using on that file etc.

I don't know an incredible amount about video codecs, so I'll explain my top two and why I use them.

The MP4 format is designed to take up a small amount of space, this makes it good for sharing online and recording on devices with limited storage. The drawback is that you lose an extensive amount of quality, especially in particularly dark footage.  The mpeg format is also proprietary, meaning if you edit on Linux you have to buy the codec.

AVI is a very nice format. It isn't proprietary and there is very little loss in quality. This means AVI files can be very large, but I always use the format whenever it's feasible because of the quality.


How to automatically synchronize two recordings of the same event? Let's say I have two recordings (or more) of the same event. Maybe one has been recorded slightly slower or faster (different "pitch") than the other one and has been started several seconds after or before the other one.

Let's also say, for simplicity's sake, that there are no gaps in the recordings.

I can synchronize the recordings manually in a software such as Audacity by importing the different recordings as tracks and shifting/stretching them, but is there any way to do that process automatically?

There is a plugin called vocalign that will do this. It is designed mainly for aligning vocal overdub and replacment dialog but it should work for what you are doing. You can use it as a VST in audacity. It isn't cheap but, if my memory serves me correct, it has a fully functioning demo.

http://www.synchroarts.com/index.php?PAGEID=products&ID=vocalign

You can try Ableton live and its wrapping feature.

To glue them together you can also use a bit of reverb and maybe some little compression.


Templates for video production? I am planning to release short and basic videos on youtube. I would like to have a more polished look and feel so I am wondering if there are templates that you can use with, say, adobe premiere, that are complete with graphics, sounds, etc. Sorta like how a theme works with Wordpress.

Take a look at http://www.premierepro.net where I'm sharing some project templates. If more people share their own templates there, it will become a great resource for free Premiere Pro templates. Everything you see on http://www.premierepro.net is free for both commercial and private use, and you can even download free sample chapters from the book "The Cool Stuff in Premiere Pro".

/jarle

There are many companies which participate in the production of the templates of the video production. Our company provide better facilities than any other company to produce templates as well as audios and videos also. You will get all the facilities in one place.

video production services


How can I capture/convert HDMI from an HDCP protected input? Basically the situation is I have a PS3 and I want to be able to split a lossless HDMI connection to my TV and something to a capture card. Using an HDMI splitter I can connect to the TV just fine but my capture card does not read HDCP.

I could use a component splitter but that would prevent me from being able to use HDMI quality video/audio on the TV, and not using HDMI as the source means my setup is more complicated; I have other sources (like my Wii U) where I have to use HDMI.

How how can I record from this HDCP HDMI in? I can take HDMI without HDCP or component video, but my searches have been unable to find to find something that either converts HDMI (with HDCP) to component or takes HDMI and spits out something non-HDCP devices can read.

For the record I know of one device that does this: The HDFury4/3. However, the HDFury3 is about $150 above what I'm currently willing to pay, I'm just looking for something barebones. I have seen numerous other devices claiming to do things like convert HDMI to component but they either have multiple 1 star reviews saying "this doesn't work at all" or they have no reviews at all. I'd rather be reasonably confidence before purchasing something like this since it seems like there are a lot of solutions which simply don't do what I need them to.

You would need a device that supports HDCP if your output source is utilizing it.  That's the entire point of the system.  The video signal is encrypted and will only exchange the data with a device which can cryptographically authenticate itself as an authorized HDCP receiver. Getting that certificate requires proving that they are going to follow the rules on what can and can't be done with the content (such as not allowing it to be recorded.)

Occasionally codes are cracked, but these codes are then removed from the valid list of codes in future products and they won't work on newer material until another code is broken.  It is also worth pointing out that (unfortunately), if you live in the US at least, such bypassing is illegal in the United States according to the DMCA which specifically prevents bypassing protective measures even if the use would be fair use.

It looks like it may also be possible to connect the PS3 to a non-HDCP device, which would prevent it from using HDCP.  If that is the case, then if you could find a device that isn't HDCP compatible or that can strip the HDCP information, then you could get an unprotected stream and do an end run around DMCA limitations.  You may have to do a soft-reset of the PS3 to get it to recognize a non-HDCP TV if it was previously attached to an HDCP one however since it starts up in the same mode it was in for the previous display.

try this its the latest device that's coming out that can get past a lot of issues you are having.

http://www.evsonline.com/atomos-ninja-star-pocket-size-prores-recorder-deck.html


Can anyone recommend a good/safe free spectrum visualizer? Something that can generate fairly nice displays for videos would be good. Can just be the generic type where it displays differing frequencies as bars, but something nicer than the harsh ffmpeg generated ones for example.

Wondering if there's something via a player like vlc I can use, i tried their built-in ones though alrdy and they were bad.

State if you do not have personal experience with the programs suggested.

Foobar2000
Is what I use for visualizations.

use elgato its pretty good
they make the stream deck


How to burn timestamp onto video? I want to burn timestamp from the video meta data on to the video.

I'm having great difficulty in finding a good tool that does that.

Is there a video editing tool out there that allows timestamp to be inserted and change the font of it?

I am editing HD videos.

Also is there a tool out there that allows changing the timestamp on the meta data for correction?

FFmpeg's drawtext filter can burn timecodes into frames.

edit: I misread the docs before.  I saw the timecode option to the filter, and missed seeing that there was a pts available for text expansion.  See the edit history for the longer-and-less-useful answer.

I eventually got around to trying it, and here's the command line I cobbled together from pasting and tweaking some examples:

ffmpeg -i /f/p/moto-g\ camera/VID_20141225_140557099.mp4 -filter_complex "drawtext=fontfile=/usr/share/fonts/truetype/freefont/FreeSerif.ttf: text='frame %{n}\\: %{pict_type}\\: pts=%{pts \\: hms}': x=100: y=50: fontsize=24: fontcolor=yellow@0.8: box=1: boxcolor=blue@0.9" -c:a copy -c:v libx264 -preset veryfast -crf 16 -x264-params keyint=60 -map 0 foo.mkv

Note the actual text to be printed needs a lot of escaping, to protect it from the shell, then from ffmpeg's arg-to-drawtext.  To modify it, change the text='frame %{n}\\: %{pict_type}\\: pts=%{pts \\: hms}' part of that ffmpeg command.

example output: "frame 0: I: pts=00:00:00.0000"  (I/B/P are frame types, from %{pict_type}.)

Modify x and y to put it somewhere else in the frame.  (you can use x=iw/2 to put it horizontally in the middle.  iw = input width.  (anchor = top left corner of the text, I think?))  Modify other params to change colors or whatnot.

This works even with VFR video.  I checked with video from the camera in a Moto G phone, which makes variable frame-rate video.  The first second has 30 frames.  A later 1-sec interval in the video has 17 frames.  (Indoors, not very well lit, so I think it's lower FPS to get more light, not because it can't write to flash storage fast enough.)  The timestamps it puts in the MP4 container are correct, so it plays fine.

The encode parameters -c:a copy -c:v libx264 -preset faster -crf 16 -x264-params keyint=60 are my suggestion for what you might want for scratch files with timestamps burned in: you just want it to encode fast, and don't care much about filesize since you're just going to use it locally, since it has timestamps scribbled all over it.  (There's even a superfast.  Don't use ultrafast except for lossless mode, though.)

keyint=60 will make sure there's an I frame at least as often as every 60 frames, for efficient scrubbing.  Leave it out if you don't need to be able to efficiently framestep backwards; lower it if you want high-rez seeking to be faster.

Use -map 0 if you want multiple audio and metadata streams copied into the output, instead of just the first audio and first video tracks (and no e.g. chapter metadata).

Try Davinci Resolve.  Very easy and capable burn in capability.
See my video tutorial on how to use this helpful feature.

Thank you.
Dan Benson


Adobe Media Encoder CC do not work/start/load on Win8 x64 So pretty much it. Simply clicking the .exe nothing happens, no errors, no nothing. It just simply do not work. Premiere works and when exporting video and clicking Queue simply nothing happens, AME doesn't get loaded neither, I just get back to Premiere window.

I also applied latest 7.0.1 update and nothing.

With CS6 everything worked.

Solution #2 (as Eric Vinyard suggested):
1. Locate file: C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\SLCache\X19zbGNfZmVhdHVyZXNfXw==.slc
2. Open it with a text editor (may need to open it as an admin as this is in Program Files directory)
3. Delete everything the file contains
4. Save and close
5. Set the 'Read Only' attribute for the file: Right Mouse - Preferences. On the first page that opens for you, look for Attributes at the bottom of this page and check 'Read Only'. Close with OK.

If nothing helped you to launch AME, watch this:


Is there a way to capture RTMP-stream and output it to SDI? Is there any way to capture an RTMP stream and output it to SDI?

Here is my situation: We specialize in producing local sports for web streaming. Occasionally we are asked to deliver a stream to a local TV-station. Paying for uplink truck and the whole satellite thing is way beyond our budget.

I'm not really familiar with IP-based workflows, that's why capturing RTMP-stream was my first idea.

I found this rack mount device called DVEO D-Streamer IP/DIG. One of DVEO's press relises announced $4000 price for the device.

Inputs: HTTP Live (HLS), UDP, RTP, RTSP, HTTP, RTMP (Open Flash), MMS.
Output: SD/HD-SDI.

These days there are a few IRD's and STB's that can input RTMP/HLS and output on HDMI.

The popular Amino A140 can do HLS to HDMI.
For a more pro solution the NOVUS-RD can do RTMP/HLS to SDI, HDMI, and/or CVBS.


Does YouTube allow multiple soundtracks Is it possible to upload one video on YouTube, and have multiple soundtracks for it? Much like one can choose the subtitles, can one make several language-specific voice-overs for the same, say, screen-cast?

If that feature is not present on YouTube, are there calls or plans for it? What other services may have this implemented?

When uploading to YouTube: no (for now...)
Your audio needs to be premixed into one stereo (or mono) channel.

When using YouTube's online video editor: yes, but you are limited to voice-over and music tracks

For more info:
http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=183851
(see point 4. adding audio)

here watch this video, here in settings there are different languages in which you may select of your choice.


Repeat/loop Input Video with ffmpeg? I just want to loop a mp4 video with ffmpeg and keep the current settings and codec.

For example if input.mp4 is 0:10 long, and I would want to loop it 4 times so output.mp4 is 0:40 long, how could I change the following command line to do that?

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c copy output.mp4

I tried...

ffmpeg -loop 4 -i input.mp4 -c copy output.mp4

...but I get the error "Option loop not found."

Concat demuxer

This allows you to loop an input without needing to re-encode.

Make a text file. Contents of an example text file to repeat 4 times.

file 'input.mp4'
file 'input.mp4'
file 'input.mp4'
file 'input.mp4'

Then run ffmpeg:

ffmpeg -f concat -i list.txt -c copy output.mp4

For Linux users

This example is the same as above but you don't have to manually make list.txt:

for i in {1..4}; do printf "file '%s'\n" input.mp4 >> list.txt; done
ffmpeg -f concat -i list.txt -c copy output.mp4

With most commonly-used modern shells, you can even avoid the creation of the list.txt file entirely. For example, with bash:

ffmpeg -f concat -i <(for i in {1..4}; do printf "file '%s'\n" input.mp4; done) -c copy output.mp4

Also see:

FFmpeg concat demuxer documentation
FFmpeg Wiki: Concatenate

loop filter

Example using the loop filter to loop 4 times, each loop is 75 frames, each loop skips the first 25 frames of the input:

ffmpeg -i input -filter_complex loop=loop=3:size=75:start=25 output

Or use the shorthand: loop=3:75:25
Filtering requires re-encoding.
This filter places all frames into memory.
Using loop=3 will loop 4 times.
To loop infinitely use -1.
You must list the number of frames to loop (shown as 75 in the example above). Max value is 32767.
Also see ffmpeg -h filter=loop.

movie filter

The movie filter has a loop option. See answer below by Monah Tuk. Filtering requires re-encoding. For audio use the amovie filter.

-stream_loop option

See answer below by Thingy and answer by Gyan.

Note that this option was buggy (see bug reports #5719, #6121, and #7043) so may not work for old builds (anything older than 2018 06-27 including the FFmpeg 4.0.x release branch). For users of old builds, as mentioned by mulvya in ticket #6121, one workaround is to first re-mux to MKV or TS then use -stream_loop in the next command.

-loop option

The -loop option is specific to the image file demuxer and gif muxer, so it can't be used for typical video files, but it can be used to infinitely loop a series of input images. This example will loop over and over but the -t 30 will limit the output duration to 30 seconds:

ffmpeg -loop 1 -i %03d.png -t 30 output.mkv

Or to loop a GIF output:

ffmpeg -i input -loop 3 output.gif

Q: "... how could I change the following command line to do that?
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c copy output.mp4" ?

A: The simple method that avoids problems of which Commands work with which version is the 'trivial solution':

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -i input.mp4 -i input.mp4 -i input.mp4 -c copy output.mp4

See also: https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Concatenate for many examples.


How can you correct EBU R128 loudness in Premiere? I have to follow this directives on a Sony XDCAM 4222 50Mbit 25fps PAL timeline with 8 x 24bit 48kHz audio channels .

  Alignment Level (AL) shall be –18dBFS with respect to maximum audio coding level (PPM4 on a BBC PPM – IEC type IIa). The Permitted Maximum
  Level (PML - as defined in ITU-R BS.645-2) must comply ITU-R BR.1384.1
  and ITU-R BS.1726. Peaks should not exceed a level -10dB below the
  digital full-scale level (0 dBFS) when monitored by a “quasi-peak
  programme meter” as specified in IEC 60268-10.

  Loudness control on all audio formats The method to measure the loudness of an audio program is settled by the recommendations,
  ITU-1770, ITU 1771 and ITU-Document 6/175-E.

  Program Loudness Level represents the ordinary level of the program resulting from the measurement of the entire contents analyzed whole
  (from start to the end, and all audio channels making up the
  soundtrack).  The Program Loudness must conform to R128-EBU

  “Short-term” LKFS values shall not be higher than –21 LKFS for the whole program.  “Long-term” Loudness must be –24 LKFS ± 0,5. In both
  cases the gate must be active at a threshold at -8 relative to the
  target “Long Term” value (- 24 – 8 = -32 LKFS). Short-term and
  long-term LKFS shall be measured for each audio program accompanying
  the picture (ie: Dubbed stereo, original language stereo, M&E stereo
  tracks, etc.).

It is possible create and Adjustment Layer with Premiere CS6 or CC and easily make sure to fix the audio of all 8 channels to respect the limits?

Wich effect I have to use ? With wich settings ? It must be done for each audio tracks or I can use an Adjustment Layer or an Effect directly to the Master output ?

In general loudness correction is a two step process. (There's a little more to it for full EBU R128 compliance, but I work exclusively in the US and this all that is required for A/85 / CALM Act compliance.)

Measure the long term/infinite loudness of the asset.
Shift the level of the asset by the difference between the measured loudness and the target.

Premiere does not have a built in method for automatically correcting loudness. But you do have a few options:

You can use the built in Loudness Radar plugin to measure the long term/infinite loudness of the asset and then manually shift the level by the difference from the measured loudness and the target loudness.
You can buy a third party plugin to do the correction.
You can use FFmpeg as I paraphrased the last time you asked this question.
You can use Adobe Media Encoder.

No "audio adjustment layers" in Premiere.

My suggestion would be to go the "master output way": edit your piece with what you have (I assume here that everything has the same specs, audio and video wise), do an audio mix-down, and play with gain/volume etc until you get what you need.

Do a test before getting in the proper editing though: create a rough 30s edit, mix it, do a mix down and play with gains/volume etc. to respect your notes. Test the exported file to see if it respects the directions.


FFMpeg set language as Unknown or unspecified in a QuickTime MOV I have to transcode with FFMpeg some video with multiple audio where various audio track are not language related, just music and so on.

I would like to assing as language something like Unspecified, Unknown, Not Applicable, Multilanguage, or so on.

Everything that is not a specific named language (English, French, Spanish, ...) works fine for me .

ffmpeg -i in.mov -map 0:a -metadata:s:a:0 language="und" -metadata:s:a:0 title="Just Music" out.mov

For what I researched FFMPeg uses the ISO 639-2 codes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639-2_codes

In my example I tried to use the und that stands for Undetermined..

In the wikipedia list there are also other possible interesting options:

The standard includes some codes for special situations:

    mis, for "uncoded languages";
    mul, for "multiple languages";
    qaa-qtz, a range reserved for local use.
    und, for "undetermined";
    zxx, for "no linguistic content, not applicable";

Non of them seems to work, everytime I try to set that values with ffmpeg it just assume "English".

Following the Apple Documentation for Moov Format we have:

https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/QuickTime/QTFF/QTFFChap4/qtff4.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40000939-CH206-34353

A very small list compared to the Wikipedia one but there's at least a Unspecified 32767

I tried with -metadata:s:a:0 language="und" or -metadata:s:a:0 language="32767" but is not working the same :(

So I tried to read the source code of ffmpeg, at ffmpeg/libavformat/isom.c line 382:

/* map numeric codes from mdhd atom to ISO 639 */
/* cf. QTFileFormat.pdf p253, qtff.pdf p205 */
/* http://developer.apple.com/documentation/mac/Text/Text-368.html */
/* deprecated by putting the code as 3*5 bits ASCII */
static const char mov_mdhd_language_map[][4] = {
    /* 0-9 */
    "eng", "fra", "ger", "ita", "dut", "sve", "spa", "dan", "por", "nor",
    "heb", "jpn", "ara", "fin", "gre", "ice", "mlt", "tur", "hr "/*scr*/, "chi"/*ace?*/,
    "urd", "hin", "tha", "kor", "lit", "pol", "hun", "est", "lav",    "",
    "fo ",    "", "rus", "chi",    "", "iri", "alb", "ron", "ces", "slk",
    "slv", "yid", "sr ", "mac", "bul", "ukr", "bel", "uzb", "kaz", "aze",
    /*?*/
    "aze", "arm", "geo", "mol", "kir", "tgk", "tuk", "mon",    "", "pus",
    "kur", "kas", "snd", "tib", "nep", "san", "mar", "ben", "asm", "guj",
    "pa ", "ori", "mal", "kan", "tam", "tel",    "", "bur", "khm", "lao",
    /*                   roman? arabic? */
    "vie", "ind", "tgl", "may", "may", "amh", "tir", "orm", "som", "swa",
    /*==rundi?*/
       "", "run",    "", "mlg", "epo",    "",    "",    "",    "",    "",
    /* 100 */
       "",    "",    "",    "",    "",    "",    "",    "",    "",    "",
       "",    "",    "",    "",    "",    "",    "",    "",    "",    "",
       "",    "",    "",    "",    "",    "",    "",    "", "wel", "baq",
    "cat", "lat", "que", "grn", "aym", "tat", "uig", "dzo", "jav"
};

int ff_mov_iso639_to_lang(const char lang[4], int mp4)
{
    int i, code = 0;

    /* old way, only for QT? */
    for (i = 0; lang[0] && !mp4 && i < FF_ARRAY_ELEMS(mov_mdhd_language_map); i++) {
        if (!strcmp(lang, mov_mdhd_language_map[i]))
            return i;
    }
    /* XXX:can we do that in mov too? */
    if (!mp4)
        return -1;
    /* handle undefined as such */
    if (lang[0] == '\0')
        lang = "und";
    /* 5 bits ASCII */
    for (i = 0; i < 3; i++) {
        uint8_t c = lang[i];
        c -= 0x60;
        if (c > 0x1f)
            return -1;
        code <<= 5;
        code |= c;
    }
    return code;
}

They talk of "und" inside the code, but if you use -metadata:s:a:0 language="und" it just return English.. :\

What is the correct way to specify it? It could be a ffmpeg bug? I'm using the last zeranoe nightly build N-92405-ge24a754916

-map 0:v \
-map 0:1 -metadata:s:a:0 language=zxx \
-map 0:2 -metadata:s:a:1 language=eng \
-map 0:3 -metadata:s:a:2 language=fra \
-map 0:4 -metadata:s:a:3 language=kin


Which web server is better for HLS streaming? I am trying to create a server that streams HLS to client. I created .m3u8 file and for receive from client use Apache web server. Some times, changing the source of video takes more than usual time... I think that it refers to web server that responds to client with delay. Can anyone help me which web server is best to put m3u8 file in that and get client stream from that?

My m3u8 file is :

#EXTM3U
#EXT-X-VERSION:3
#EXT-X-TARGETDURATION:11
#EXT-X-MEDIA-SEQUENCE:11
#EXTINF:10.080000,
21.ts
#EXTINF:10.080000,
22.ts
#EXTINF:9.760000,
23.ts
#EXTINF:10.880000,
24.ts
#EXTINF:9.600000,
20.ts

I'm working in a Live Streaming company in Singapore, and we use Nginx as the web server for HLS. Since Nginx is way better at processing static files. You never need to worry about the performance, nginx can utilize the 10G network card easily.


Does Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 have a fullscreen mode? Essentially what I'm looking for is a way to make Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 go fullscreen. I do not mean the fullscreen preview of the video or fullscreen on a specific panel (like the timeline).

I want to get rid of the Windows taskbar and the window border. The same way that you would go fullscreen with a browser by pressing F11.

I'm surprised I haven't found any shortcut or any discussion online. I'm working on a 15" laptop monitor and would like to maximize my workspace. I've tried to press F11, searched for it in the menus and the keyboard shortcut list but haven't found anything.

As clarified in the comments on AJ's answer below, I am looking for something like pushing F in Photoshop or Lightroom, where the workspace is otherwise the same.  For example, this is how it looks in Lightroom.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

I'm fairly certain there is no such mode.  It doesn't have the same kind of feature that lightroom does as the full screen video preview is really the closest in terms of being related functionality.

The full screen mode is helpful in Lightroom because it allows focusing on the photo with only basic controls.  Premiere is much more complex than LR and a significant portion of screen real-estate is taken up by those controls.  If you aren't purely focusing on the video, then the amount of lost and distracting space really isn't a big issue.

Note that if you really need every last scrap of screen real estate though, you can adjust the task bar so that you can make it only a small line on the bottom of the screen though.  You really are not practically losing any meaningful amount of screen real-estate.

The only functionality is the functionality that maximizes a particular panel or full screens the preview, but you already mentioned those are not what you are looking for.  That's the closest you are going to get though.

Another option is to press Ctrl+ to get full screen preview.


What equipment should I get for starting out making professional quality films? I want to start two short film projects but I don't know what equipment I need to get a good professional quality result. I've been saving some money so I hope budget is not a problem. Also, what's most commonly used to record audio in this kind of project? I want to get the sound from two people talking with the camera placed far away from them. I'm trying to make an independent production company so I'm seeing this as an investment. The cheaper the better though.

For videography, the best bang for your buck is, hands down, going to be an entry level DSLR and a decent lens.  For audio, if your budget can allow for it, I suggest getting a stand alone multi-track recorder.  The Zoom H4n is a particularly popular model with videographers for its low price and decent (though not superb) audio quality.  (Update: The H5 and H6 are now available offering significant upgrades over the H4n, but also at a slightly higher price point.)

There are far better options and values as you get more skill in the field, however for starting out, you probably don't want to invest too much until you get some experience under your belt.  It's easy to spend upwards of $10 to $15 grand on a nice videography setup as you get more and more professional, but a $1500-$1700 setup with something like a Canon T4i or Lumix G2 with a moderate level lens and an H4n or similar for recording audio (with some basic shotgun or lavaliere mics) is a decent start.

Also, be sure not to skimp on a tripod.  You'll want a solid, sturdy tripod (probably aluminum) with a good fluid tripod head to make sure you can get steady shots.  Just a solid tripod alone can run you in to the $350 to $500 range.

If you'll be shooting indoors, you may also need a light kit.  A cheap 3 point lighting kit can be had for a couple hundred dollars, though depending on what you intend to shoot, you may be able to get by without this initially.

So overall breakdown I'd recommend starting out is around $500 to $600 on an entry level DSLR, $150 to $300 on a lens (if your DSLR body supports video auto focus, such as the Canon T4i, a stepper motor lens is needed), about $280 for an audio recorder, about $100 to $200 on mics, about $400 on a tripod and optionally about $150-$250 on lights.  Altogether, that's about $1600 or $1850 and you should be able to make some pretty solid professional looking stuff.

It does add up quickly, but the good news is that you can improve on the gear incrementally over time once you have the basics.  If you do have more than 2 grand to start out with, I'd spend a little bit extra on the lens or the camera body to get better low light performance and better background blur.  Better mics or mic boom arms also couldn't hurt and if you do go with lights, light modifiers or more powerful lights is also never a bad investment, though the best place to spend any extra money is going to depend on the kind of shooting you are planning on doing.

Here is a list of equipments my film-making friends consider very useful.(I  own few of them). Budget is  $1800, excluding a good computer and post production software.

A decent DSLR camera with kit lens. (eg: Canon t3i with 18-55mm lens - $500)
Prime lens for great image quality and shallow depth of field (Canon 50mm f1.8 - $100). Great for shooting interviews and close shots.
Wide angle lens to capture landscape and real estate (Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 - $500)
A good audio recorder (Zoom h4n - $200)
An image stabilisation device with a gimbal. These are extremely useful to get rid of shakes and obtain smooth, fluid video shots while moving your camera (Glidecam HD2000 is popular and costs $500).  A tripod is generally optional once you have this.


Video player with motion blur or frame averaging I here would be a good place to ask, I apologize if Im mistaken.

I am looking for a video player that can add motion blur to videos or that can insert an average frame in between two frames.

The reason I think I need this is because some videos appear stuttery on a low response time monitor. If I connect an older monitor to the exact same setup, the problem goes away. I figured it would be a good way to test this theory.


Exporting 360 video in a 360 video format (not plain video) I have the Insta360 One X camera and want to edit the video I take.

Basically I am putting the camera on a tripod and videoing 60 seconds. Then in Insta360 studio 2019 software I can edit the video to change the view angles (using keyframes) so when I play it looks like it is panning round.

When it is exported it always ends up as a plain video.

I want it to play as a 360 video so the user can pause it and also change the view angle if they want to look somewhere in particular then carry on playing the video again.

So far I can only find a way to export in a plain video & not in 360 video — can't this be done. Is there any other video editing software I can use (I don't mind paying a one off amount to buy it)?

Hope all that makes sense.

Yeah Spatial Media Metadata Injector destroys the video. I was somehow able to export a video using insta360 studio as an actual 360 video but have no clue how I did it.

It seems all anyone wants to do is make claims to all these types of features but no one wants to explain how they're doing anything. The information people are leaving is useless.

I was on the phone with insta360 today for about 40 minutes trying to have them explain to me what a keyframe is, what purpose it serves and why it's even in insta360 studio to begin with.


After Effects: How to animate letters to random position Is it possible to animate letters to random position in After Effects? Yes I can do it manualy letter by letter but I want to achieve effect like on animation below for any input text.

You could probably write a complicated expression which will allow you to do that. If you deal with short words like those though, I would recommend you duplicate the text layer and mask out one letter for each layer. You can then animate each layer in position and scale so that the letters move into place

How about Text->Animate->Position and then Add->Selector->Wiggly? If you then set that Position to non-zero value, letters will skip around randomly over time and Selector properties will give you some control over the process.


best software for multicam video production We have records from 30 cameras (couple TBs of video files), which were started almost simultaneously, part of them were action cameras (so no timecode here, and there are gaps because of battery replacement), other part were usual hd cameras with time codes embeded to video files.
All video is 1080p25.

We need to sync all videos together, and then render all 30 sequences after color correction and cutting.I have tried adobe premiere cc, but is was real pain, especially rendering with crushes and other glitches.

Is there any alternative for Premiere?
We have quite recent workstations running windows 7 with consumer video cards (both ati 7970 and nvidia 680 are available), so it will be great if software can do distributed rendering and use gpu. We also have couple of 2 year mac pro, so osx only software can also be of use.

Premiere is your best option unless you plan on spending a boatload (thousands and thousands) on an Avid system.  I'd suggest working on smaller sets of cameras at a time and then working off the combined feeds.  You can use multicamera editing mode with several cameras at a time, make the best choices out of those and then run each of those sequences in to another multicamera sequence to further resolve them.

The process is going to kind of suck no matter what system you do it on because it is a boatload of synchronous footage to go through.

You can also try Sony Vegas Pro (only Windows). It has good multicam features


Re-encoding Lossy formats with Lossless formats I was re-encoding videos downloaded from YouTube with Lossless H.264 (using FFmpeg) because I'm experimenting with CRF=0.

I found that resulting videos are much bigger (1 gigabyte) than the original video (100 megabyte).

However, from my knowledge of lossy compression, it is basically like lossless compression (plus, it's the same codec) except it throws away lots of minor details that won't be noticed but take up lots of space. Hence, shouldn't I achieve a similar file size if I encode the decoded file using CRF=0 because lots of data are already thrown away? I don't quite understand this.

I use the following command:

ffmpeg -i 'file' -an -c:v libx264 -crf 0 'out file'

When data “thrown away” by the encoder, the decoder must still render a full image. The image is just not faithful to the original image, but it is a full image. When you reencode with CRF 0 you are telling the encoder, “I want the output to be identical to the input” and the encoder doesn’t know information was lost on a previous encode. so it must spend bits to encode the “new” image losslessly.

You didn't specify the -preset option, so the command uses the default -preset medium.

Use -preset veryslow:

ffmpeg -i 'file' -an -c:v libx264 -preset veryslow -crf 0 'out file'

because slower preset will provide better compression.


Extend duration of imported static layers in After Effects I have imported a layered Photoshop file into After Effects as a layered comp with several .psd "footage" layers.

I've created and edited the comps within the 20s main comp with animations and effects. Now I need to extend the static layers(all 7s) to the length of the main comp(20s).

I've tried dragging to extend their regions and right-clicking > Time > Enable Time Remapping(this allows me to extend the region with keyframes, but the content still ends short of the comp length).

When I right-click the static layer and click "Open Layer Source", the preview shows the layer region extending to the same time as in the timeline...

but the green render bar only goes to 5s...

I can see this when I drag the playhead in the main comp timeline—the layers with this problem disappear at 5s even though their regions extend to 7s.

1. I need to get these layer regions to extend the length of my 20s comp.

2. It seems like the layer source only goes to 5s when I "Open Layer Source", so even if the region goes to 20s, the 'content' only goes to 5s.

How to I get extend everything to 20s without reimporting everything and doing all of my keyframes/animations/effects over again?

Or is there a way to reimport those layers, but keep all of my keyframes/animations/effects.

Using the latest Photoshop CC 2015.5 & After Effects CC v2015.3.

Open the imported comps. Not in the layer source window, just as comps (i.e. double click from the project panel).

Go to the composition settings menu and change the duration to whatever you want.

Drag the out-points of all the layers to the end of the comp (hint, press the end key on your keyboard and then with all the layers selected hit alt+]).

In your main composition you will now be able to drag the end of the photoshop comps to their new length.

I had this happen to me when importing a single .png. No matter what I did once the file was in AE, I just couldn't adjust it.
Turns out that when you import a .png there is an option to import as a "PNG Sequence" at the bottom of the import file dialog. It was checked. So, I unchecked it. POW, worked like a charm. Imported PNG assumed the full length of the composition when I dropped it in.


Recording and playing video with variable frame rate We are using a streaming camera to record and to play back surveillance video.

This camera sends a RTSP stream which will be recorded by our application as a H264 video.

In our application, the H264 videos will be stored in a MP4 container and will be published on a HTTP-server (Apache2). The stored videos can now be watched with any HTML5 web browser. So far, so good!

Our problem is, that the camera sends his frames with a variable frame rate. This is not a problem as long we watch the stream live. But when we watch the recorded H264/MP4 videos the time begins to drift. This means because of the variable frame rate, sometimes the video will be played too fast and the time is not correct!

So, does someone have experience with H264 videos with variable frame rate (VFR)? How can we play these VFR videos without time drift? Is it possible to convert VFR video to video with constant frame rate?

(All tested players like VLC seems to have the same problem...)

Here the output of mediainfo:

Complete name                            : VIDEO_REPLICA_12.h264
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
File size                                : 249 MiB
Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable

Video
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : High@L3.2
Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames                : 1 frame
Format settings, GOP                     : M=1, N=15
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Maximum bit rate                         : 20.0 Mbps
Width                                    : 1 280 pixels
Height                                   : 800 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 1.600
Frame rate mode                          : Variable
Standard                                 : NTSC
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive

Are you sure the files your recorded have indeed a variable framerate? It sounds like you recorded with a constant framerate (even though you get a variable frame rate video feed) which introduced this "artifact" and the players then of course play it back with a constant frame rate even though they shouldn't.

To properly convert variable frame rate footage into constant frame rate footage you can reside to Handbrake. It's an easy to use tool for h264 encoding that lets you choose to convert your video to a constant frame rate.

Transcode Your Video First
You need to transcode your video first using a "real" encoder like Apple Compressor or Adobe Media Encoder.

Quicktime
MP4
29.97 or 30 frames per second

Make sure you use a standard resolution like 640x360,720x405,1280x720,1920x1080 or 640x360 for standard def 4x3.

You could also try using HandBrake, it may very well do the trick for you and be a lot easier.


Masking out the video background in Sony Vegas I have a video and I need to mask out the background for it.

A screenshot from the original video, credits to The Muppets Studio

The video has been shot with a still camera on a steady background.
My goal is to mask out the background (e.g., everything not related to moving objects).
I don't have the original sources, of course.
It is also hard to recreate the background (I mean, to precisely match colors).

My approach, in theory, is the following:

Collect a series of screenshots where different parts of background are visible (when objects move away);
Glue those parts into a background image (see image below for a partial result);
Place the background into a layer and compute the color difference between the original video and the background;
Build a set of pixels for which:

the difference is nearly zero (within a certain color threshold occurring due to rounding/compression problems);
and within a certain minimal area (so that individual pixels did not occasionally appear);

Wrap those pixels into a key mask.

Still, I'm stuck with building a proper structure of layers within Sony Vegas to accomplish my goal.

How this can be done?

My backround attempt

My environment is:

Sony Vegas 12.0/x64, I'm not considering another software;
Basic set of plugins/filters, but I will also appreciate references to 3rd-party plugins, even the commercial ones;
Still, I would prefer a "clean" approach based on masking.

Thanks a lot!

chroma key choose a colour*drag) then take eye dropper and select background in the preview window


Problem with video playback of AVI (Xvid) on Sony BDP-S186 [solved] I'd like to play an AVI on my Sony BDP-S186.
The user manual states: Supported Codecs and File Types: including Xvid (.avi) (http://pdf.crse.com/manuals/4290282312.pdf - in German).
I'm trying to play the file from an USB stick.
The video file's codec is MPEG-4 Video (XVID).
The device says "Die Datei ist verfälscht oder unbestätigt," which means that the file is corrupted.

Sometimes it works for AVI files, sometimes it doesn't and I actually do not know what's the reason for the issue. The issue seems to be well known by the internet, but I didn't find an appropriate solution for now.
This forum deals also the issue: http://www.cczwei-forum.de/cc2/thread.php?threadid=6317 (in German)

I'm buying the capability of playing files with that format/compression and not the capability of not playing them.

I would also be interested in the legal side of this issue. I don't think the cause for not playing specific videos is caused by copyright protection or anything related, even if Sony qualified themselves always for being a bad example of copyright protection guards.

I changed the file system on the USB stick from FAT32 to NTFS. The video playback works now.


DaVinci Resolve 16 shows black screen on imported media This is my first time using this software cause I am trying to learn. but when I import my media, it shows all black screen and all I can hear was audio.

File imported are .mp4

I suspect you are using an unsupported codec.  Are you using the Linux for windows version?  What is the video you are trying to import encoded as?

I have the same issue, it seems to be an incompatibility with the new hardware acceleration in V.16 and AMD video cards. Resolve staff just blame AMD when questioned. But several driver updates have come out since the earliest report of this bug (even a few since I have had the issue), and nothing has changed. Sadly, there isn't a solution yet so if you're looking for a free video editor to get started I would go for HitFilm Express.


How to set up Paid Live Streaming event? I would like to set up a live class which may take place over a couple of days and I would like to stream it live.

My question is, how do I set it up so it allows access to only people who have paid and registered and is there a way of doing it through Wordpress run website?

I came across a term called PayWalling while doing my research, not sure if that's got something to do with my requirement.

Thanks very much!

It depends on the level of protection you want, but no, there isn't really a good way to do it with Wordpress.  You can paywall a portion of your Wordpress site, but a live stream isn't going to go over HTTP, it is going to run over an RTMP stream or something similar.  Paywalling your Wordpress site will make people pay to find out the name of the RTMP stream, but unless you have some type of authentication on the RTMP stream (or give each user a unique stream link), then you couldn't prevent sharing the link once one person pays.

What you really need is a stream server that provides either login to a stream (and only allows each user to access it once) or you need a stream server that can provide the same stream to multiple URIs and only allow one connection per URI. Both of these effectively do the same thing, they make it so that the connection details provided to a customer only work for that customer.

Alternately, you could use a list of authorized IP addresses and have your website add the IP addresses of paid customers as authorized viewers so that they can access the stream from their location.  In this case, you should automatically update the IP address list whenever they log in.

After a bit of googling for 'paywall upstream' I came across this link. http://publisher.tinypass.com/guide/archives/tipstrick/any-ovp

it might work for you

This is a company that provides a paywall service for streaming


rate stretch tool on premier I have made a sequence on adobe premier. One of the clips I have stretched using the stretch rate tool and another I have compressed using the same tool.

I have made sure the clips are video blended. However when I render the sequence into a QuickTime movie the clips I've slowed down and speed up are green and damaged. Does anyone please know why this is and how I can fix it? Many thanks

Probably you forgot to change framerate of composition.


What is the best way to clean the outside of audio/video cables What is the best way to clean a cable that has gotten sticky. I know the best thing to do is to not get them sticky in the first place, but after time they get dirty/sticky all by themselves.

Lets assume that there are no breaks or cuts in the outside of the cable.

How would one best clean the outside of a cable of stickiness without damaging it more.

For delicate cables use dish washing soap and warm water with a clean rag. Do not tug or squeeze on the cable too hard and be extra gentle with anything that has twisted pair.

For not so delicate cables rubbing alcohol on a clean rag then applied should do the trick.

goo-gone or butane lighter fluid will remove just about any gunk that has built up on your cables.


Format of imported video files in Adobe Premiere What is the format of newly imported file into the Adobe Premiere project? Evenmore, will the video be lossy encoded?

Premiere works with the source files you provide.  Depending on the format it may generate a lossy copy that can be used for faster preview in the editor, but final renders will work directly from your source files.  That's what's going on if you see it says it is conforming  files in the lower right corner.

Check the supported video formats of Adobe Premiere here. And i don't think it would loss some video quality because it's very powerful and professional, that's one of the reasons why people like to spend such much money for it.


How to move a layer using a slider control? I'm trying to create a mogrt file that has the option of moving a layer using a control (instead of just moving it on the timeline).

Is there a way to create a slider control for example that allows to adjust some kind of "offset"?

Yes, in short. But you will need to learn Expression Controls.

Search YouTube for "Expression Control Slider After Effects"

There are a lot of good tutorials which will walk you through the process.


Does animation make use of any Artificial Intelligence? I have always wondered if the animation technology used in film-making uses AI to any extent.

Yes, quite frequently, particularly in crowd simulation.  Actors within the crowd are programmed with particular behavior types and will interact with each other to form a more lifelike crowd.  The interactions are usually fairly simple, but it is a form of AI.  I'm not sure if it is still around, but one of the early programs used for this was actually called "Behavior".

Some procedural animation could also be described as a form of AI as well.  For example, when a character needs to walk across uneven terrain, it can be possible to setup a physics simulation and have the character alter their movements to maintain balance.  This is really also a form of AI combined with physics simulation.

There are probably others as well, but those are the first two that come to mind as relatively common uses.

I don't think it's very common. They use animators, which may have set movements, which they can queue at certain times. Self-interactive AI seems like it would take too much time to program and reprogram.


Making video content for 30' x 10' 3:1 Widescreen Looking for some help on how content should be created for an upcoming show with super widescreen blend on it.

The show consists of a 30' x 10' front projection screen with unblended resolution of 3840 x 1080. Video content is currently being created, as the projectors are being blended there is a 600px overlap, the resulting width is 3240px.

Should I get the content made in 3240px or 3840px?

Any help appreciated.

Since the resulting projected image is 3240 px wide, that's the size you should create. Then output two "halves" -- the leftmost 1920 px, then the rightmost 1920 px. There will be 600 px that appear in both parts. That's the overlap.

It depends on the play out and display system but generally, using Adobe After Effects, make a comp the full size of the raster, then render out a half size left projector and half size right projector. The blending will be done at the vertical intersection. So comp at 3840x1080, two half comps at 1920x1080 for each of the two sides. I would suggest talking to the display technician to be sure.


Video overlay - how is this effect created? I came accross this image - and was wondering how to recreate it in after effects?

https://www.truedigital.co.uk/assets/video/us-hero.mp4

I was able to produce it by doing the following:

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

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

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


How to delete an edit in Final Cut Pro (un-blade) I want to be able to "undo" the blade tool, in effect merging clips
  together. How can I do this?

(Answered another question without noticing it was for Final Cut X, not FCP 7, but here is the answer for anyone using Final Cut Pro 7)

If you have made an edit and you want to remove it, you can click on the edit then press delete and the edit will be removed.

fig1. selected edit:

Note that this only works if the time on either side of the edit hasnt changed, as indicated by the red triangles. If you have cut out any video, you cant delete the edit:

Click on the line for the edit that you have done with the blade in order to select it and then press back space.


Style all open captions at once in Premiere Pro Is it possible to style all open captions at once in Premiere Pro CC2017?

Since Adobe promotes the captions feature as a way to edit all captions in one place, I hope there actually is a way to style them all at once.

This has changed in the 2017 release of Premiere CC. You can now change all captions at once. Plus Adobe has added some other enhancements to the caption workflow.

Unfortunately no, and sadly there is not even an option to 'select all.'

I believe you can export the captions and load it into a program like Lemony to do you styling (better option anyways), and then import a alpha-channel file back in to Premiere (more on that below).

I have recently (about 2 months ago) started getting into subtilting or open captions for projects. And as of now I can say that I am very disappointed in Premiere's captioning system. If you are just doing 2-3 sentences its fine, otherwise I use a dedicated system for it.

My workflow is as follows

Aegisub to create a encore txt file
Import in Lemony Subtitler
Run a batch style on all my subtitles
Export .avi? with alpha channel
Import into Premiere and put the subtitles on a top layer.

This workflow is extremely fast, and way better than dealing with Premiere's archaic captioning system. Especially Aegisub, which uses some wizardry to automagically select spoken 'text' by analyzing the waveform so that your subtitles meet an optimal length (characters per second) for reading based on the time of the selection.


Is there a way to improve quality for videos with snow/confetti/LCD in background? The effect I'm referring to:

Essentially, the snow/confetti in the shot means lots of motion, hence a lot of the available bitrate is taken up by it, thereby reducing the quality of the other elements in the shot.

In particular, I see this problem with videos that have animated LCD displays in the background:

Those videos are uploaded by the original TV broadcaster (with access to the highest quality original video), and more or less top out looking like 480p, even when viewing at 720p or 1080p. The same quality issues appear in videos on the broadcaster's own site, so it's not just YouTube's compression going overboard:

http://www.mbcplus.com/Player/MusicBox/RetrieveClipInfo.aspx?clipId=736

If a human were deciding what elements in the shot to dedicate the bitrate to, they would obviously allocate it to the foreground objects (the people) at the expense of lowering the quality of the background (the LCD).

Is there any technique (encoding/compression/etc.) that can improve the quality of the foreground elements when such a background is present in the shot?

And I'm sure some people would also be interesting in any techniques that can be done at the time of filming that would produce better results, when they cannot change the content of the shot and have to deal with snow/confetti/animated LCD in the background.

Yes this feature exists, but it is not widely used yet.

Texas Instrument developped such solution, called SmartCodec, which looks to be implemented in a Samsung video surveillance system: Megapixel Camera This is a HW based solution, that is for market of video surveillance.

I think it would be implemented in future video codecs HEVC, adopted by many boradcaster, and it's called Region-of-Interest Based Rate Control Scheme
HEVC is already released, and in used today, but this feature really looks new. And it will take months~years for it to be implemented in the encoder on the production house, I guess. Apparently, it is something really new, since a paper about that has been accepted for presentation at the ICIP 2016, which took place in september.

Maybe you can give video editor (Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, etc) or video enhancer (AVCLabs Video Enhancer AI) a try.


Sources to learn more about Audio/Video compression, codecs, algorithms etc. I was quite surprised when I learned the fact that the MP3 codec is extensively based on the Fourier Transform. I'd like to learn more about these topics in general. When I say more I mean the working principles of these technologies.

For even more clarity, I would prefer something like this video produced by Xiph.org

Compression codecs and methods are also based extensively in the field of Psychoacoustics.  For this, I thoroughly recommend the books available from the Focal Press, such as this one

I would recommend Wikipedia. They will have all the information you want, and have links to more information.


H.265 disadvantages with video dimensions not multiple of 8 Are there any disadvantages (like worse image quality/more compression artefacts) when encoding a video in H.265 with dimensions that are not a multiple of 16 or 8, but instead a multiple of 4 or 2?
For example 1920x816 vs. 1920x818.

At least in file size there seems to be no difference, as far as my tests go.

Since H.265 is computer intensive, encoding H.265 video will consume a lot of time, especially your computer is not power enough. You have to upgrade your CPU and GPU and download a powerful HEVC video encoder that is able to activate the GPU acceleration to do the task.


RG6 vs RG59 HD-SDI cables for live stream It seems there are lots of discussions on the web, none recently though, on RG6 vs RG59 and the distances that they can carry signal.

For situations when quality matters, such as live streaming (as opposed to something like CCTV), is RG6 the only way to go?

A 984' RG59 cable costs just about as much as a 200' RG6 cable. Assume that the signal is powerful enough to send the signal over 900'. Will the RG59 cable experience significant and noticeable signal loss compared to the RG6 cable?

There is a significant price different between the two types, so if I can get away with a RG59 cable, certainly I will.

Unfortunately there is no perfect or exact answer. Your question topic mentions HD-SDI, which is a digital signal. Those tends to degrade 'cliff-wise', unlike analog signals where degradation is gradual. It will partly depend on the quality of the receiving device -- whether or not, or how well, it can capture the signal as the eye pattern turns to mush.

Having said that, 900 feet over RG59 is bound to be trouble, even over the premium shielded variants like Belden 1505a. For 720p, that's rated for maybe 200 feet. Your footage may vary (-:

RG6 will be better, but again, shielding matters so you're better off with 1694a or equivalent. Even then, I wouldn't gamble on 900' without testing it in place.

RG59 vs RG6 vs RG11 cable lengths

HDSDI can be 1.5GHz or 3.0 or more depending in if it is a 1080i or 1080P or 2K and at what frame rate.

It is a far more technical question requiring a much more detailed answer.  If you are buying cable, quad shield is supposed to be muchbetter than dual shield.