Need help from video experts

[arjaybe]

I've got the bits working. Treat the chapter MP3s in Audacity. Run my little ffmpeg script to attach an image and produce an MP4. Record video in OBS and export MP4. Toss into Kdenlive with the chapter(s), concatenate and render to MKV h.265. Convert in VLC and export MP4. Ready for YouTube.

The product is still crude and not pretty. Need to improve the lighting, at least. Still a lot of learning ahead, thankfully. Learning is my favorite thing. No, really.

If you want to have a look, find the Okanagan Reader on YouTube. Don't say I didn't warn you.-)

rjb

[m_pav]

I use a combination of 3, Kdenlive, Openshot and Handbrake. Kdenlive is my go-to for most things though.

I find Handbrake indispensable after doing some image stabilisation in Kdenlive. One recent video I repaired was of my Son singing on stage and getting a standing ovation, but the camera shake was so intense, the stabilisation made all the sides of the video warp and twist taking up roughly 20-30% of the scene. To remove the wobbles, I added black bars and rendered the video, but the resultant video of course retains the black bars. There may be a way to crop the video to remove them and stretch it back to full frame size, but I know not of a way to do it in Kdenlive. With Handbrake, I only have to open the mp4 made from the Kdenlive render and the crop is already done for me, mind you, the full length of the rendered video had the black bars and I wouldn't think it possible if only a portion of the video contained the black bars. In Handbrake, you can find the details of the cropped image in the Dimensions tab. It really is a simple locate the source, then export using your chosen container.

I have used OpenShot in the past to stabilise videos, and it is good now compared to my earlier experiences of it. I do like its timeline view because on a lowly 1080p display, it's easy to stack up 10 layers without losing too much of the interface controls to squishing.

[arjaybe]

Can you record video in any of those? Kdenlive, Openshot, Handbrake.

[m_pav]

Never tried. They are not strictly known for capturing a stream. OBS usually does a good job of that, but it has a bug that presents in most Linux systems whereby the video is delayed through a cache that can in some instances consume your entire RAM if left to run long enough at a high definition or bitrate and often the av sync is out, though consistent throughout the recorded stream. It pays to have a "clapper" (don't know it's real name) so you can align the av sync in post production.

I've seen posts claiming up OBS can continue processing for up to 12m behind the event for a hour long recording, but when left to complete, the stream was intact. The delay effect is not consistent across differing machine setups, some have negligible delay.

I have used Simple Screen Recorder to record a video segment at full screen with audio captured thru the "monitor of xx-yy" audio subsystem in my laptop. This usually gives good enough results as a capture medium.

[CharlesV]

Can you record video in any of those? Kdenlive, Openshot, Handbrake.

I too have only ever used Simple Screen Recorder .. which does an amazing job and has many options.

Kdenlive does have a capture mode, you can set it in Menu } Settings } Configure KDEnlive and then Capture.

[arjaybe]

I keep on learning. I'll look at Simple Screen Recorder.