Question about PS's video editing capabilities for a small project.

[Travelling Light]

Thanks for that Tom. And good on you for throwing that little video together! That's pretty much the effect I'll be going for. Maybe have a look at the video I originally posted again and it will better help you to visualize things as I explain them to you now. I'm basically trying to do the same thing but for a contemporary TV show. The Knots Landing credits use boxes of varying sizes, but I decided to limit it to 3. One will be a portrait one with the actors name underneath. Then I will have one square one that I'll use to make a grid of 4 together, and then one rectangular one which will be the same width as two of the squares, and can therefore go under above two squared to make another grid.

For each one I need a close up (or upper body at least) of the actors face. To achieve that I have been resizing the clip accordingly and then using the marquee tool to frame the face and then only reveal that part of the layer. So, each clip kind of needs to be dealt with individually to get the face the right size withing the allotted size frame. Therefore I'm not sure if I can really group them together, or even a few of them together, and use the same commands for a group. Does that make sense? So bearing all that in mind will the FFMPEG still be worthwhile using?

Also, eventually when it's finished the idea would be to put it on Youtube, so maybe there's some things to consider to make sure it looks how it's intended to look?

I downloaded FFMPEG and also the builds, but when I try to open either it's telling me windows can't open the file and asking me if I want to select an installed program or search the web for the correct program?

Just saw your edit. It's only a 10 second clip that needs reversing so hopefully my system can handle that!

Many thanks

 

[MrToM]

First things first....

You should have downloaded the FFMPEG STATIC build for either 32 or 64 bit.....it should be a zip file of sorts.

All you need to do with this is unzip it in a folder somewhere.....anywhere....doesn't matter.

Once you have WINFF installed you can then point it to that FFMPEG folder from the preferences...



...and that's all you need to do as far as those two things are concerned....WINFF is now set-up and ready.



As for the cropping of your clips I may not have been as clear as I could.

The clips will have to be done individually for the cropping yes, but once they are all cropped they can be compressed and the sound removed all in one go.

If the 'crop' for each clip is static, ie you need to lop off 20px from the top, 50 from the right, 10 from the bottom and 37 from the left then you can set this up in WINFF to do that for you....it has a crop feature.....and it'll save out the clip at whatever dimensions you want.

You can find out how much needs to be cropped from viewing the clip in PS first but then use WINFF to do the heavy lifting.....for each clip.

You'll be surprised at just how quickly it'll do it.

If on the other hand you have a 'dynamic' crop then it cannot be used.
A 'dynamic' crop is one which moves to follow an object within the clip...like a person or object...it has to move for each frame in order to keep the 'subject' within the crop.

I still don't know how you are cropping your clips at the moment...are you using a layer mask?
Are you then rendering out each clip as you do them?
When you say resize do you mean re-sample or transform?

To be honest I'd use WINFF to prepare each clip ready to then be used in PS but as I don't know what 'clips' you have and their properties I'm not able to determine if this is best option for you.

If you get WINFF installed and set up to point to the unzipped 'bin' folder of FFMPEG then I'll go into reversing a video after that.

You'll need to point to BOTH ffmpeg.exe AND ffplay.exe as shown in the image above.....but that's all.

I'm sure we can make this easier for you even if it doesn't sound like it at the moment.

Regards.
MrToM.

 

[Travelling Light]

Ok, so I have WINFF set up now so I'm gonna have a go at it.

I have been using transform to resize the clip and then using the marquee tool and a layer mask.

So, I get it now that it will be faster and easier for the cropping and also when it comes removing the audio and also compressing them. Maybe this all won't take as long as I was beginning to think it would!

I don't think I'll be doing anything like a dynamic crop so that won't be a problem.

I'll have a try at cropping a clip on there now.

 

[MrToM]

Fabulous!

Yeah.....transforming is tricky with just a single image let alone a video.......and PS is not really geared up to do either very well.

FFMPEG on the other hand is specifically written for video 'editing' in so far as everything but the final cut.

When you try the 'cropping' set the 'Convert To' to MPEG-4 and the preset to 'MPEG-4 H.264 video (very high quality)'

This is the best format to choose for video....and 'very high' is middle of the road so you can go up to 'super high' or down to 'high' quality if you need to....depending on the results you get.

ONE IMPORTANT THING that I nearly forgot to tell you.....make your clips (and final video) sizes MULTIPLES OF 8px

This is IMPORTANT!.....MULTIPLES OF 8 (Eight)

So 80x8 is fine .... 800x400 is fine .... 1280x720 is fine .... 1024x768 is fine .... 305x207 is NOT fine .... 196x90 is NOT fine.

I wont go into the gory details but just keep your clips AND the project dimensions multiples of 8....I can't stress that enough.

You may have to calculate how many pixels to crop off the clip in order to leave a frame size that is a multiple of 8 but that's no big deal really.....simple maths.

If the cropping works for you then I'll send you my command 'preset' which converts to mp4 and removes the sound.....the 'dimensions' and 'cropping' you can set from within WINFF.

One other thing to remember, although it goes without say really, is to make sure that your output dimensions match your crop size.....or more specifically that the ratio is the same.

You'll get 'squashed' output if they don't match exactly.

I hope thats all you need for the moment......don't be afraid to ask if you are having problems.

Regards.
MrToM.