Category: Technology

Source Video

The source video was taken with the Insta360 Ace Pro using PureVideo mode at 4K30fps. It’s 28 seconds long and 355 MB in size. HDR was disabled and can’t be enabled in this mode.

I converted that video using Handbrake using the following presets and modifications:

Very Fast 2160p60 4K AV1

This preset maintains the resolution (4K). I set the quality to the lowest option (63). I changed the framerate from 60 to “Same as source”.

Very Fast 2160p60 4K AV1

This preset maintains the resolution (4K). I left the quality at the preset value (35). I changed the framerate from 60 to “Same as source”.

Super HQ 2160p60 4K AV1 Surround

This preset maintains the resolution (4K). I left the quality at the preset value (20). I changed the framerate from 60 to “Same as source”.

Super HQ 2160p60 4K AV1 Surround

This preset maintains the resolution (4K). I set the quality to the highest option (0). I changed the framerate from 60 to “Same as source”.

Here are the results

According to ffmpeg, when encoding to H.264, a Constant Rate Factor (CRF) value of 17 or 18 is considered to produce visually lossless output. ffmpeg defaults to a value of 23. Looking at the table above, the nearest preset quality CRF value in Handbrake is 20, which produces a video with a 20 Mbps bitrate and an output that is 82% smaller.

To compare video playback quality, you can use GridPlayer to play multiple videos side by side. Of course, if the videos have 4K resolution, you should use a 4K monitor.

This post will explain how I easily made this short 5-minute 4K video using LosslessCut and VideoStudio Pro.

Short videos like this are handy when you want to condense a lot of video footage into a short video. Unlike 1080p video footage, 4K footage is much larger in file size, so, depending on your computer, editing it can be slow and frustrating. I used LosslessCut to easily and quickly create many short video clips from several large video files. I then used Corel VideoStudio Pro to assemble the clips and add transitions, effects, music, etc.

1. Take Video Footage

I used the Insta360 Ace Pro action camera. This camera has a large flip screen, which made it super easy to get footage on my own using a tripod. The camera has pretty good low-light quality when you choose the PureVideo setting. I took 4K30fps video.

2. Extract Clips From Video Footage

Open your video footage in LosslessCut.

Go to the beginning of the first segment you want to turn into a clip. You can click the play button to play the video or jump to different sections by clicking on the timeline. You can also click the left and right arrow keys to move one frame at a time. Mark the beginning of the segment by clicking the left-finger pointer button. Go to the end of the segment and click the right-finger pointer button. In my video above, I made each clip between 3 and 5 seconds long.

You will see the segment in the right column.

To create a new segment, click the plus (+) button below the segments in the right column. If you want to delete a segment, you can click the minus (-) button.

Repeat this process until you have all the segments you want to export. When you’re ready to export, click the Export button in the bottom right corner. The segments will almost instantly be exported as individual clips without loss of quality.

3. Compress Video Clips

Use Handbrake to batch compress all video clips.

I used the Super HQ (20) preset since that produced 82% smaller files while maintaining visual quality.

Learn more

4. Assemble Clips in a Video Editor

I used Corel VideoStudio Pro to create my final video.

Import all the clips into VideoStudio Pro. Make sure to enable smart proxy to improve video editing performance.

Since I made a 4K video, I made a poster image that was 3840 px by 2160 px.

For the music, I chose the following

• Loverush by Franz Gordon
• End of the World by Ivan Shpilevsky
• Final Frontier by Liubomyr Prask

For the transitions, I used Fade to Black. You can choose “Apply current effect to video track” to apply the transition to all clips at once.

For the workout scenes, I added the duotone effect to the clips so the background wouldn’t be distracting.

Drag the Duotone effect thumbnail to the clip on the timeline. You’ll see an “FX” label on the clip.

Here’s how a clip looked before and after applying the duotone effect.

When you click on a clip that has the duotone effect applied, you can customize the effect, e.g. by changing the color.

5. Export the Video

After assembling all assets (video clips, music, etc), transitions and effects, click the Share tab to export the video. Make sure the render video properties match the properties of the source video clips to maintain quality. In particular, pay attention to the resolution (3840 x 2160) and bitrate.

If you have a large collection of music files (mp3, etc) and want to easily manage them on desktop and mobile, you’ll have many apps to choose from. After testing some of the highly rated ones, I’ve (for now) settled on what I think are the two best: MusicBee for desktop and Omnia for mobile. This article will go over how I use these two apps to easily manage almost 2000 songs.

MusicBee

At this time, MusicBee is only available for Windows. Below is a screenshot of my MusicBee instance. The UI is customizable, which is great.

Header Bar

For the header bar, I customized it to have just what I care about, specifically

• MUSIC (lists all music)
• PLAYLISTS (lists all playlists in the left panel and all music within a playlist in the middle panel)
• INBOX (I use this as a temporary staging location when I add new tracks to MusicBee)
• NOW PLAYING
• MUSIC EXPLORER (lets you browse by artist, showing albums for each artist)

To edit the header bar tabs,

• right-click on a tab and click “Close tab” to remove it
• click the + icon to add a new tab

“MUSIC” Tab

When I click the MUSIC tab in the header bar, I see this:

Left Sidebar

The left sidebar shows a list of all artists. The very first option is “All Artists”. I click “All Artists’ to show a list of all my music files in the middle pane.

Middle Pane

The middle pane shows the filtered music tracks. I customized the columns to just what I care about, specifically

• Bitrate (I use this to check the encoding bitrate. If a bitrate is too low, I may replace the track with one with a higher bitrate).
• Time (the song’s duration)
• Year (the year the song was released)
• Title (the title of the song)
• Artist (the name of the song’s artist)
• Playlist (a comma-delimited list of playlists a song is in)

To change the columns, right-click on the header and click “Set Displayed Fields…”

Bottom Middle Panel

In the middle, below the track list, is an optional pane for editing a song’s properties. I normally enter the following metadata:

• Title
• Artist
• Year
• Comments (the YouTube video ID if I ripped the song from YouTube)

Bottom Right Panel

In the bottom right panel, you can see a song’s artwork. You can change the article by right-clicking and browsing to an image on your computer. The image should be a square, e.g. 500 x 500 px.

“PLAYLISTS” Tab

When I click the “PLAYLISTS” tab, I see the following:

In the left sidebar, I see a list of playlists. In the middle panel, I see the list of song tracks. To create a playlist or add/remove a track from/to a playlist, right-click on a track, click ‘Include in Playlist”, and either

• click “<New Playlist>” at the bottom to create a new playlist
• click or ctrl+click one or more existing playlists to add the song to the playlist(s)

Playlist Format

My music files are all in a single folder called “Music”.

Within that folder, I have a subfolder called “Playlists” containing all my playlist files.

I export my playlists in m3u8 format with relative paths. This allows me to copy my entire “Music” folder, including “Playlists” subfolder” to another device, like my phone or tablet, and the music player on the other device should be able to read my playlists and referenced music files without error.

To set the playlist file format and path preference, click the hamburger menu in the top left corner, then click “Edit Preferences”.

Then, click “Library” in the left sidebar and then select “M3U8” and check the “use relative file paths” as shown below.

Now, if you export a playlist and open the playlist m3u8 file in a text editor, you’ll see relative paths to each song in the playlist like this

Rename, Delete and Export a Playlist

To rename or delete a playlist, click on the playlist in the left sidebar and click the corresponding option.

Omnia

Omnia is now my preferred app for mobile and tablet. It is currently only available on Android.

Omnia is pretty simple and intuitive to use except when you update playlists.

First-time use

When you use Omnia for the first time, tell Omnia where your music and playlist files are.

1. Click Settings > Music Folders and specify a folder path. Omnia will scan the folder for all music files.
2. Once the files have been scanned, click on “Songs” tab in the main view to verify your songs are listed.
3. Then, click on the “Playlists” tab to verify the playlists were loaded. If they weren’t, click on the 3 vertical dots in the top-right corner, click “Import”, click “SELECT ALL’, then check all playlists, and then click the “OK” button.

Subsequent use

If you’ve updated your music file library and playlists, you’ll need to

1. click on the 3 vertical dots in the top-right corner, click “Rescan Library”, to get updated files.
2. click the 3 vertical dots to the right of each playlist, and then click “Delete”, to delete the playlists that have been updated
3. click on the 3 vertical dots in the top-right corner, click “Import”, click one or all playlists, then click “OK” to load the updated playlist.

Workflow

This is my workflow for acquiring music, adding it to MusicBee, and transferring it to Omnia on another device.

1. Buy a song on Amazon Digital Music ($1 / song) or download a song as mp3 from YouTube using yt-dlp. I store the new files in a temporary “Music” folder.
2. Edit the song in Audacity as necessary, e.g.
   • trim out start and end silence
   • normalize the volume
3. Copy the music files to the folder containing all other music files.
4. Import the new music files into the “Inbox” in MusicBee clicking “MusicBee” > File > ‘Scan Folders for New Files…”

I then specify the folder containing all my music, select “add to inbox”, which is a temporary staging area, and then click “Proceed”.

The new music will appear in the “INBOX” tab in MusicBee.

1. Edit each song’s metadata (title, artist, year, etc) and add the song to existing playlists
2. Move (send) the songs from the “INBOX” to the main “MUSIC LIBRARY”.
3. Export any playlists that have been updated
4. Connect my other device (phone / tablet) to my laptop
5. Copy the music files from the temporary folder on my laptop to the external device
6. Copy the updated playlist files from my laptop to the external device
7. In Omnia in the external device, rescan the music library, delete and reimport any updated playlists

Let’s say that you have a very confidential message or file that you want to share with someone and you absolutely don’t want anyone else to be able to see it. Most people would just share the message via email or some other communication tool, but this isn’t necessarily secure, especially since the tool provider, like Gmail, could access your email communications. When you want to be 100% sure that only your recipient can view your message, the best practice is to encrypt/decrypt it using GPG.

Encryption Variations

Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is a proprietary encryption program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication.

OpenPGP is a non-proprietary, open-source version of PGP.

GnuPG (Gnu Privacy Guard / GPG) is a non-proprietary, open-source version of OpenPGP.

GpgFrontend

This post will show you how to share secret messages with a friend by encyrpting/decrypting them using GPG. There are many tools that can encrypt/decrypt messages using GPG, including command line tools. I will use GpgFrontend because it appears to be the easiest for the general public to use. For this tutorial, I will use Windows.

1. Download the GpgFrontend

Both you and your friend will need to perform this step.

You can download the Windows installer or the portable version that doesn’t require installation. For simplicity, I will just download the portable version.

1. Download the portable version from GpgFrontend’s latest releases, labeled GpgFrontend-*******-windows-x86_64-portable.zip.
2. Extract the contents of the downloaded ZIP file.
3. Run GpgFrontend.exe from the extracted Program/bin directory.

2. Generate a Key Pair

Your friend will need to perform this step.

Open GpgFrontend

Click on “Manage Keys”.

Click “New keypair”.

Fill in your details, such as name and email, and choose your desired key type and size. You can also add a comment if you wish. Set an expiration date for the key, or choose ‘Never Expire’ if you prefer. Optionally, create a passphrase for added security. I will click the Non Pass Phrase checkbox for simplicity. Once all details are filled in, click ‘OK’ to generate your key pair. You will then see your key listed in the KeyPair Management window.

3. Share Public Key

Your friend will need to perform this step.

In the KeyPair Management window, select the key you want to export, right-click, and click “Show Key Details”.

Click the “Operations” tab, then click the “Export Public Key” button.

Save the public key somewhere on your computer. For me, the filename generated was David[email protected]_pub.asc. The “pub” stands for “public” because this is your public key that you can share with other people. If you open the public key file, it will look something like this.

Your friend should send you this file so that you can use it to encrypt your message.

4. Import Public Key

You will need to perform this step.

Click “Import Key” -> “File” and browse to the public key file your friend shared with you.

Click the OK button to confirm importing the key.

5. Encrypt a Message

You will need to perform this step.

Write a message in the main text area of GpgFrontend.

Check the public key in the list of keys in the Key Toolbox pane. To do this, click in the leftmost column of the key you want to use, outlined in red in the screenshot below.

Click the “Encrypt” button. You will see that your plaintext message was converted to a PGP message.

6. Share the Encyrpted Message

You will need to perform this step.

Copy the encrypted message and share it with your friend, e.g. via email.

7. Decrypt the Encrypted Message

Your friend will need to perform this step.

Copy the encrypted message into GpgFrontend’s main text area.

Click the “Decrypt” button. You’ll see the encrypted message get converted to plain text.

With GPG, you can do many other things as well, including

• sign and verify text
• sign and verify files
• encrypt/decrypt files

Learn more

After making a number of vacation videos using

• my phone (Google Pixel 8)
• my action camera (Insta360 Ace Pro)
• my two 360 cameras (Insta360 X3)

I’ve found the following works best for depending on the scenario.

Driving

• If HDR is necessary and you only want to film in one direction, mount the Ace Pro on the windshield facing the front of the vehicle (FPV)
• If you want to film both the vehicle occupants and the road, mount the Insta360 X3 on the windshield
• Shoot either a regular video or a Timeshift video

Walking (Daytime)

• Mount one Insta360 X3 on your chest (FPV). The Ace Pro isn’t a 360 camera, so it will not allow you to reframe later on to get subjects that are not directly in front of the camera.
• Hold a second Insta360 X3 or X4 on an extended selfie stick such that the camera is at eye level to film yourself

Walking (Nighttime)

• For good image quality, mount the Ace Pro either on your chest or on a selfie stick and use “Pure Video” mode to get good night shots.
• If you use the Insta360 X3/X4, the image quality will be much worse.

Hotel Room Tour

• Mount the Ace Pro on a selfie stick and film as FPV or film with the screen flipped up so you can film yourself (selfie)
• Use “Pure Video” mode because you will be indoors and with unnatural (low) light.
• I tried using my phone with a gimbal, but I preferred the simplicity and the results of using the Ace Pro.

Here’s a comparison of the picture quality from taking a snapshot of a video taken by both the X3 and the Ace Pro. As you can see, the Ace Pro picture quality is way better. Click on each image to open the original files.

Here’s another comparison.

Eating

• Use X3

Airplane Take-off and Landing

When filming a take-off/landing from a window seat of an airplane, the difficult is keeping the horizon level. Also, with HDR technology, the sky can look overexposed, white, and washed out. If you use a 360 camera, you can adjust the horizon in post, but that’s a hassle. Ideally, use a gimbal, like the one integrated with the DJI Osmo Pocket.

There may be times when you want to listen to a popular song, but you just want an instrumental version of it. There are many tools that use AI to remove vocals from a song, but unless you are making a track for karaoke, where you’d provide your own vocals, simply removing the vocals from a song will not result in music you’d care to listen to. For example, if you search YouTube for an instrumental version of a song, you’ll find many where the vocals were simply removed – and with poor quality at that. A better instrumental version of a song is one made by replacing vocals with instrument, e.g. piano, saxophone, etc. Compare the 3 audio clips below.

Audio clip with original vocals

Audio clip with vocals simply removed (somewhat imperfectly)

Audio clip with vocals replaced with Alto Saxophone instrument

Audio clip with vocals replaced with Chill Wave Synth instrument

Here’s how to replace vocals with any instrument.

1. Create a BandLab account

https://bandlab.com

Some features require a subscription.

2. Open the splitter

Click the icon to the right of the BandLab logo, then click on the Splitter link. Or, go to https://www.bandlab.com/splitter.

3. Split a song into tracks

You will have to option to choose how many tracks to split the song into. Since we’re only interested in replacing the vocals, you can choose “4 Tracks”. Then, click the “Split” button.

BandLab will upload the song audio file and take a minute to split the audio.

When it’s done, click “Open in Studio”.

You will see the 4 tracks in the Studio.

4. Convert voice to MIDI

Right-click on the “Vocals” track and click “Audio to MIDI” > “Voice to MIDI”.

5. Change the MIDI track to one of 370+ instruments

You’ll see a new track below the “Vocals” track called “Audio-to-MIDI”.

On the “Vocals” track, click the “M” button to mute that track. The track’s soundwave will gray out.

6. Choose an instrument

1. Click on the “Audio-to-MIDI” track.
2. Click “Studio Grand” (the default instrument” to open the “Browse Instruments” dialog. Click on the play button to the left of an instrument to preview the sound. Search for an instrument by typing the instrument’s name in the search field. I will type “sax” and then click the “Alto Saxophone” instrument.

7. Preview the instrumentalized song

1. On the “Audio-to-MIDI” track, move the vertical playbar to the beginning of some signals in the track.
2. Click the Play button to preview the song.
3. Experiment with different instruments.

Optionally, lower the volume of the “Audio-to-MIDI” track if that produces a better result.

8. Tweak MIDI notes

Some of the MIDI notes probably won’t sound right. You’ll need to tweak them.

1. Click the “Audio-to-MIDI” track.
2. Click the “MIDI Editor” button at the bottom left.
3. Click on a MIDI note (a single blue bar to the right of the vertical piano keys) to hear the note.
4. Left-click and drag the MIDI note up or down to change the sound.

9. Export audio

When you’re satisfied with the preview, download the audio by clicking Project > Download > Mixdown As”

Choose one of the download options.