Re: Burn caption into video

On 28/02/2025 7:47 am, Oliver wrote:

On Thu, 27 Feb 2025 15:00:49 +1300, Geoff <geoff@nospamgeoffwood.org> wrote

For that, Subtitle Edit & ffmpeg freeware appear to work fine, but it's
wonderful that there are professional level tools to help the creators.

>
That's really the 'amateur' version, though capable of 'pro' results. Their (Magix, was Sony, was Sonic Foundry) professional equiv is Vegas Pro. Any functions are optional, and subtitles is just a very basis one.
>
I guess it comes down to factor such as $$$ spent, ease of implementing subtitles (and tweaking of them), how you value your time, etc.

 I appreciate that you brought up the professional tools as compared to teh
freeware tools, where there is often a 1:1 freeware copy to the pro tools.
 An example is PhotoShop versus Paint.NET/Pinta on the Windows platform.
The freeware tools do almost everything the pro tools do, as that's what
their main raison d'etre is after all. To copy what the pro tools do.
 In that case, you get most of the pro editing functionality, for free.
And, as a bonus, the freeware tools are easier to use than the pro tools.
 So I agree with you that it depends a lot on how you value your time.
Speaking of how much time it takes to do something...
I agree with you that the professional GUIs often can sometimes do far more
than the freeware GUIs do, but even so, I think we perhaps might be hard
pressed to find a professional GUI that does much of anything faster than
some of the free command-line programs suggested in this thread can do.
 For example, a 'deshake' operation with ffmpeg freeware is pretty fast.
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf deshake output_deshake.mp4
 So is a 'rotate by 180 degrees' pretty fast on the freeware command line.
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "transpose=1,transpose=1" output.mp4
 So is embedding yellow 32-point fonts pretty fast as a freeware command.
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "subtitles=input.srt:force_style='FontSize=32,PrimaryColour=&H00FFFF'" output.mp4
 Extracting thumbnails is also very easy on the freeware command line.
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "fps=1/5" thumb%04d.jpg
So is embedding any chosen thumbnail easily to do as a freeware command:
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -i thumbnail.jpg -map 0 -map 1 -c copy - disposition:v:1 attached_pic output.mp4
 Removing metadata (including thumbnails) is also easy on the command line.
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -map 0 -map_metadata -1 -c copy output.mp4
 Cropping/blurring areas using the cmd line is much more work though.
 Crop out a section 20 pixels from the top and 20 pixels from the bottom.
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -filter:v "crop=in_w:in_h-40" -c:a copy output.mp4
Blur out a section 20 pixels from the top and 20 pixels from the bottom.
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "split[original][blurred]; [blurred]crop=iw:20:0:0,boxblur=luma_r=10
 Crop to an 80-by-60 pixel area, starting from position (200,100).
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -filter:v "crop=80:60:200:100" -c:a copy output.mp4
Blur an 80-by-60 pixel area, starting from position (200,100).
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -filter:v "crop=iw:ih:0:0,split[original][blurred]; [blurred]crop=80:60:200:100,boxblur=luma_r=10:chroma_r=5[blurred_cropped];[original][blurred_cropped]overlay=200:100[out]" -map "[out]" -map 0:a? -c:a copy output.mp4
 As is speeding up (or slowing down) a section a little more work though.
AFAIK, you have to first chop the input video up into separate sections.
ffmpeg -ss 00:01:00 -i video1.mp4 -to 00:02:00 video1-cut1.mp4
 And then you can speed up that section (handling audio how you want).
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "setpts=0.5*PTS" -af "atempo=2.0" output.mp4
 And then you can reassemble the separate sections back together.
dir /b *.mp4 > list.txt ffmpeg -f concat -i list.txt -c copy output.mp4
 So far, I've had to do all those things repeatedly with my short videos
taken from my phone. I find ffmpeg does it fast once you know the command.
 But I think the two or three things your suggested professional GUI would
probably do faster & easier might be these three tasks I have had to do.
 1. subtitles of what I want to point out in the video
2. cropping (or blurring) hand drawn areas of the video
3. speeding up/slowing down entire sections of the video
  While I found that I had to use the SubtitleEdit freeware GUI to make
adding subtitles into a push-button simplicity, the other two are harder.
 Is it very easy to do those other things using your suggested pro program?

Yes. And not even the 'pro' level app.
But you seem to equate 'paid for' as 'professional' - which is not the case.
Your 'free' does seem to involve a hell of a lot of unintuitive frigging around to achieve basic results.
But whatever gets you through the night....
--
geoff