FFMPEG Letterboxing with Colors - Week 15

The only thing I really got out of this tutorial was the letter boxing at the top and bottom of the video to make it look wide screen.

66 cd Test2
67 ls

68 ffmpeg -i letter1.VOB -vf pad=100:50:0:0:blue letter2.VOB
# The pad command within the ffmpeg documentation online : http://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-doc.html does help with getting a top and bottom border on the video. However, the blue above doesn't set anything to a color. It stays black. It seems that with most command line tricks with ffmpeg, -vf is used and then the command = something in quotes.

69 ffmpeg -i letter1.VOB -vf pad=0:0:100:50:blue letter2.VOB
70 ffplay letter2.VOB
71 ffmpeg -i letter1.VOB -vf pad=0:0:720:480:blue letter2.VOB
72 ffmpeg -i letter1.VOB -vf pad=0:0:0:0:blue letter2.VOB
73 ffplay letter2.VOB
74 ffmpeg -i letter1.VOB -vf pad=0:0:0:0:red letter3.VOB
75 ffplay letter3.VOB
# the code in the multiple lines above gives me several errors when it comes to the width, height, x, y. To work it has to be 0:0:0:0. Color still doesn't work. I looked at letter1.VOB, letter2.VOB, and letter3.VOB and they all turned out the same. I guess the above lines did work somehow even though I got errors. I will play only the first one-letter1.VOB.

76 ffmpeg -i letter1.VOB drawbox=10:20:200:60:red@0.5 letter4.VOB
77 ffplay letter4.
78 ls
79 ffmpeg -i letter1.VOB drawbox=10:20:200:60:red letter4.VOB
80 ffplay letter4.Vob
81 ls
82 ffmpeg -i letter1.VOB drawbox=0:0:0:0:red letter4.VOB
83 ls
84 ffmpeg -i letter1.VOB "drawbox=0:0:0:0:red" letter4.VOB
85 ffmpeg -i letter1.VOB "drawbox=0:0:0:0:red@0.5" letter4.VOB
86 ffplay letter4.
# the lines above are when I tried to draw a border of color which the documentation does not provide enough of an explanation on becuase it refuses to work.

87 ffmpeg -i letter1.VOB pad=640:480:0:40:violet letter.VOB
# As an alternative I decided to set the color just using pad like the documentation suggests which didn't work either.

88 history > letter.txt

Dealing with Time of Video or Film-Week 14

66 cd Test2

67 ffmpeg -i tscopy.VOB -t 00:00:30 output.VOB
# Sets the time of the first file to the time specified and saves it as the second file.

68 ffplay output.VOB # play the specified file.

69 ffmpeg -i tscopy.VOB -t 00:00:30 -vcodec copy -acodec copy output2.VOB
# Specifies the time of the video, but keeps the quality of the video with the copy function for the  -vcodec and -acodec settings.

70 fflpay output2.VOB # spelling error.

71 ffplay output2.VOB # play the file.

72 ffmpeg -i tscopy.VOB -ss 00:00:05 -t 00:00:30 -vcodec copy -acodec copy output3.VOB
# takes the file and sets the start time and how long to play the clip with -t, keeps the original quality and saves it to an file name.

73 ffplay output3.VOB

74 ffmpeg -i tscopy.VOB -ss 00:00:05 -t 00:00:25 -vcodec copy -acodec copy output4.VOB
# changes the overall time of the film to be shorter with -t.

75 ffplay output4.VOB

76 ffmpeg -i tscopy.VOB -ss 00:00:05 -t 00:00:25 -target ntsc-dv output5.dv
# specifies the compression type to ntsc-dv and makes the final result a dv file.

77 ffplay output5.dv

78 ls -lha

79 history > splitvid.txt

FFMPEG Audio continued - Week 14

66 ffmpeg -i twosides2.VOB -an -vcodec copy tscopy.VOB
# ffmpeg takes imput video, copies the quality, and saves it as a new filename.

67 cd Test2

68 ffmpeg -i twosides2.VOB -an -vcodec copy tscopy.VOB
# -an = audio none, which takes away all the audio from the video. -vcodec copy means that it keeps the quality of the video

69 ls

70 ffplay tscopy.VOB # playing the file

71 ls

72 ffmpeg -i Sleep\ Away.mp3 -1 twosides2.VOB -vcodec copy tssleepaway.VOB
# I put -1 instead of -i.

73 ffmpeg -i Sleep\ Away.mp3 -i twosides2.VOB -vcodec copy tssleepaway.VOB
# I put the mp3 audio file from my computer over the wrong video.

74 ls

75 ffplay tssleepaway.VOB 

76 ffmpeg -i Sleep\ Away.mp3 -i tscopy.VOB -vcodec copy tssleepaway2.VOB
# I put the mp3 audio file from my computer over the video that I removed audio from.

77 ls

78 play tssleepaway2.VOB # I accidently typed play instead of ffplay.

79 ffplay tssleepaway2.VOB

80 ffmpeg -i Sleep\ Away.mp3 -i tscopy.VOB -vcodec copy -acodec libmp3lame tssleepaway3.VOB
# -acodec libmp3lame means that the format will change to mp3 using the provided mp3 library of ffmpeg.

81 ffplay tssleepaway3.VOB

82 ls -lha
# ls the file size of all the file in a folder or directory.

83 ffmpeg -i Sleep\ Away.mp3 -t 00:00:30 Sleep\ Away2.mp3
#set the first mp3 file to be cut to 30 seconds and saved as the second file.

84 ffplay Sleep\ Away2.mp3

85 ffplay Sleep\ Away2.mp3
# I played this file multiple times because I wanted to get the same visual translation of the audio as I did in the last post. Below, it shows the progression of the piano notes like a person reads a sheet of music.

86 ffplay Sleep\ Away2.mp3

# When the audio reached 30 seconds, the following effect would occur.

87 ffmpeg -i Sleep\ Away2.mp3 -i tscopy.VOB -vcodec copy -acodec copy tssleepaway4.VOB
# this copies the audio codec of the mp3 file to put on the specified video.

88 ls

89 ffplay tssleepaway4.VOB

90 ls -lha

91 ffmpeg -i Sleep\ Away.mp3 -t 00:00:10 Sleep\ Away4.mp3
#Cuts the original mp3 down to 10 seconds.

92 ls

93 ffmpeg -i Sleep\ Away4.mp3 -i tscopy.VOB -vcodec copy -acodec copy tssleepaway4.VOB
# now plays the 10 second mp3 with the video.

94 ffplay tssleepaway4.VOB

95 ffmpeg -i Sleep\ Away4.mp3 -i tscopy.VOB -vcodec copy -acodec copy -t 00:00:10 tssleepaway5.VOB
# makes both the audio and video 10 seconds long.

96 ffplay tssleepaway5.VOB

97 ffplay tssleepaway4.VOB

98 ls -lha

99 history > ffmpegaudio.txt

Unfortunately, I couldn't upload any of the videos I created from the command line. So I will share them with you on dropbox. Dropbox is really convenvient for things like this.

FFMPEG sound-Week 13

This ffmpeg tutorial was great in order to capture just the audio from a video into different formats.

Here is my shell history:
66 ffmpeg
67 ffmpg -i twosides.VOB tsaudio.mp3
68 ffmpeg -i twosides.VOB tsaudio.mp3
69 ls
70 cd Test 2
71 ffmpeg -i twosides.VOB tsaudio.mp3
72 cd Test2
73 cd ..
74 l
75 ls
76 cd Test2
77 ls
78 ffmpeg -i twosides.VOB tsaudio.mp3
79 ls
80 mplayer tsaudio.mp3
81 ffplay tsaudio.mp3
82 ls
83 history > ffmepgsound1.txt
66 ffmpeg
67 ffmpg -i twosides.VOB tsaudio.mp3
68 ffmpeg -i twosides.VOB tsaudio.mp3
69 ls
70 cd Test 2
71 ffmpeg -i twosides.VOB tsaudio.mp3
72 cd Test2
73 cd ..
74 l
75 ls
76 cd Test2
77 ls
78 ffmpeg -i twosides.VOB tsaudio.mp3
79 ls
80 mplayer tsaudio.mp3
81 ffplay tsaudio.mp3
82 ls
83 history > ffmepgsound1.txt
84 ls
85 ffmpeg -i twosides.VOB tsaudio.wav
86 ffplay tsaudio.wav
87 ffplay tsaudio.wav
88 ffplay tsaudio.wav
89 history >> ffmepgsound1.txt

So basically what I accomplished with this tutorial was taking the captured audio and playing it with ffplay.
This is the website that told me ffplay existed as an audio player. http://howto-pages.org/ffmpeg/ This will be very handy in the future. I played the wav file of this audio so many times because I wanted to demonstrate in this post how a visual representation of my voice was displayed in the audio dialog box that popped up when I played the audio.

 

The black spaces represent when audio is absent and the white shapes represent my voice-over narration and any ambient sound or sound effects from my film, Two Sides of One Coin.

But the really fascinating quality of this discovery was that when I edited the audio for my film originally, there was a part in which I split the audio into two parts, to illustrate the two sides of one coin theme. When I listened to this part of the audio, I noticed that the vioce-over narration was showing up visually as magenta in the foreground and green in the background where white had been previously. It was showing visually and through opposite colors that I had split the audio into opposite parts.



Visual Effects Terminology - Week 13

In the last blog post's video, a number of visual effects terms were presented, but I was unfamiliar with them. To increase my understanding of post production, I will define the terms now.

1. Plate: Visual Effects scenes and can focus on the forefront, middle, or back of a scene. http://effectscorner.blogspot.com/2007/05/visual-effects-supervisor.html
2. Raw Plate:  Regular footage of a film before the process of special effects.  http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/golden-compass.htm
3. Holdout Matte:  The holdout matte shields the film for being exposed in certain areas. Black parts of the matte shield, while the white lets light and imagery imprint onto the film. http://www.oocities.org/~special_effect/st_comp_effect.html
4. Diffusion Pass (Diffuse Pass or Beauty Pass): a completely rendered model that contains diffuse lighting among other attributes. http://www.3drender.com/light/compositing/index.html
5. Previs: Developing the look of a shot such as implementing storyboarding. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Previsualization

Other terms I couldn't really find a solid definition for is Matte Vector(which is probably just an image made of vectors) and Beauty Model and Beauty Matte ( probably just the best form of an image ).

Visual Effects for the Day After Tomorrow- Week 12

The visual effects for the film Day After Tomorrow were implemented by using different techniques of animation. The company Hydraulx produced the icebergs that were used for the first few minutes of the film. A sculptor came on board to create the icebergs out of styrofoam and the special effects team scanned these styrofoam images into the computer and a landscape was created out of them. The surrounding landscape also had bits of ice which was animated by hand. Dynamics were used to illustrate the collision of objects on screen. When creating animation like this, the special effects people stated that physics and the type of environment play a part. Specifically, there were character animators to animate the pieces of ice separate from the icebergs. There is a part of a scene where characters in the film are drilling into some ice and a crevasse is created. One big goal of the visual effects team that worked on the film was to produce photo realism, which I believe they accomplished. The light in a crevasse becomes darker the deeper one looks down into the earth, which is what the animators were strove to do.

The huge storm that was portrayed from space within the film, called a super cell, was modeled and animated from scratch because using photos didn't work well enough. For the LA Tornadoes, some rotoscoping was involved in which the tornadoes could be moved to different places within the frame. As a reference, the visual effects team used video of actual tornadoes in rural areas. When animating the tornadoes the setting that the tornadoes were affecting had to be animated as well with the debris and flying objects, etc. An LA street was modeled so that tornadoes could destroy it.

One aspect of a scene that was interesting, and which I had never heard of being done before, was the color grading of a live action scene instead of a green or blue screen. The advantage of doing color grading is that it only effects the color of the shot and maintains the real visual elements of the landscape. For the helicopter crash scene, photography and 3D animation were combined. I find it fascinating how some of these post-production methods are used in film.

Special Effects in 2012 Film - Week 12

The more I watch special features for films, the more I realize that even though computer graphics are prevalent in modern films, some productions try to actually create the dramatic situations out on set.

For the film 2012, the production crew followed the following process:
1. Film as much on set as possible.
2. Film on a stage with a blue screen.
3. Use computer graphics to finish the drama of the shot.

The scene that is highlighted in this video is the lava explosion from Yellowstone. I have to admit that when I watched this movie for the first time, which was last year sometime, I felt like the dramatic situations didn't seem realistic. For example, a situation like the volcano erupting on such a huge scale so quickly would, it seems, make the characters react in a more dramatic and panicked fashion. If a film is going to have high quality computer graphics, I think the emotion and characters should carry a lot of weight as well. It almost seemed like they were on a theme park ride when in the RV.

For the first objective above, the special effects crew transformed the RV for the part of the scene where a volcanic lump impacts it. Also, to make the RV seem like it was lunging over a break in the ground, a ramp was made available by the special effects and stunt team. For the second objective, a gimbal, used in film for motion simulation, simulated the shaky ground with the actors in the RV, so the production people could film it safely. Thirdly, computer graphics was utilized to create the volcanic catastrophe.