What's a good free Windows video editor that crops out data in the MP4 video frame?

He who is Mayayana said on Thu, 28 Sep 2017 11:00:52 -0400:

In the Win7 group someone just recommended
VirtualDUB. I downloaded it. First it wouldn't open
mp4. So I gave it an AVI. It allowed me to copy
a frame and paste it into Paint Shop Pro, but I
was unable to paste the edited frame back into
the video. That function is not on the menu.

Yikes! The only suggestion so far was VirtualDub, from Pooh, who is well
known to be helpful (unlike nospam who has zero honorable intentions).


Here's what p-0''0-h the cat (coder) said on Thu, 28 Sep 2017 15:00:22 +0100:

VirtualDUB. Worked for me.

And this was my response today:

Thanks for that suggestion of VirtualDub because if you've done the task,
then that drops out dozens of failed freeware tests right off the bat!

Freeware isn't free.
The cost of freeware is knowledge.
The knowledge is gained at the expense of time & effort.

So I appreciate that you put in time and effort in the past, with
VirtualDub freeware, so I will check that out when I get home later today.

Googling for the canonical location, I find this:
http://virtualdub.org/
https://sourceforge.net/projects/virtualdub/

On 9/28/2017 9:47 AM, harry newton wrote:
He who is harry newton said on Thu, 28 Sep 2017 13:40:55 +0000 (UTC):

All I'm asking here is for someone who has done this type of editing what
they feel the best free Windows 10 video editor is for cropping out
information in an MP4 video.

[...]
What is the technical term for the cropping of video data like this?
http://i64.tinypic.com/27xi5hf.jpg

You can do this with the paid version of Filmora by creating a block for
text at that location and omitting the text. It would only have to be
done once for it to cover the duration of that video segment.

--
best regards,

Neil

In message , harry newton
writes:
He who is J. P. Gilliver (John) said on Thu, 28 Sep 2017 15:24:19 +0100:

You might be better including the Windows 10 newsgroup, rather than
the Windows 7 one.

Unfortunately, the Windows 10 newsgroup is not archived by deja-google.

I was going to say there is more to life than deja-google ...

Nonetheless, there is a separate question to the Windows 10 newsgroup, but

.... but that implies that you already have more access to newsgroups
than that limitation anyway.

it didn't include rec.photo.digital due to the limitation of newsgroups in
the news server (it included the android and freeware folks).
If it were archived, I'd point you to it, but the title is:
"How to edit Android screen recording to remove WiFi MAC address & SSID?"

FWIW, I had been thinking of suggesting VirtualDub too, but I didn't
know if it could blank or blur parts; I've used it mainly for format
conversion (without terrible results that parts of this thread have
suggested; I don't know if it can use mp4s though) and cropping (which
it does fine).
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"To YOU I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition." - Woody Allen

"nospam" wrote

| I'd be interested to know of even one free video
| editor for Windows that has drawing tools like
| line, rectangle, etc, that can be applied on a
| per-frame basis, or even to the whole video.
| I spent an afternoon exploring at one point and
| Avidemux was by far the best option I found.
|
| the usual way is to add any image as an overlay, usually one with an
| alpha mask (but that's not a requirement).
|
So you don't actually know a single Windows
program that can do it.

In message , Neil
writes:
On 9/28/2017 1:42 PM, harry newton wrote:
[]
https://filmora.wondershare.com/
[]
. Filmora will put the effect on the face it detected.
So the functionality seems to be called "face off", which I will search to
see if freeware Windows programs have this "face-off" feature set.

Well, good luck with all of that. I've used the "paid" version of
Filmora with Win10 for a couple of years, and can tell you that it is
capable of the task in more than one way. I mentioned the simplest.
Quite frankly, your time must not be worth much to avoid the cost of
that program. This topic alone would have paid for it a few times over
at my rate.

To save others wondering: as far as I can tell from the above page, it's
$40. And that's a yearly fee, not an outright price.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

No, I haven't changed my mind - I'm perfectly happy with the one I have, thank
you.

He who is J. P. Gilliver (John) said on Thu, 28 Sep 2017 19:26:52 +0100:

Quite frankly, your time must not be worth much to avoid the cost of
that program. This topic alone would have paid for it a few times over
at my rate.

To save others wondering: as far as I can tell from the above page, it's
$40. And that's a yearly fee, not an outright price.

Thank you both, J.P.Gilliver & Neil for your observations & information.

To Mr. Gilliver, I thank you for finding the cost, which I always amortize
over ten years that we stick with any given great tool, so in this case, it
costs $400 to block out data in a video used to post to the Internet once
to block out SSID/BBSID information in a WiFi video.

By way of contrast, and to Neil's point, I buy "tools" all the time, e.g.,
I change my own tires and balance them statically, where it cost about $300
for the tire mounting/dismounting/balancing tools and where the materials
costs (valves, weights mostly) is negligible, so that, after the first
fifteen tires (at a savings of about $20/tire), the tools are free
thereafter.

Over a span of ten years (which is usually how I amortize tools), the cost
is $300 and the savings (of five tires every two years for each of three
vehicles) is $600, so the "cost" savings alone is $300 in the first ten
years, and $600 per year thereafter (if I did the math in my head right).

The time is "about the same" for dropping off the car, waiting in the
office, picking up the car, haggling with them because I have never once in
my entire life seen a tire "correctly" mounted (trust me, I know that the
shop knows how to properly mount a tire - but that shop also knows that
almost no consumer knows how a tire should be properly mounted - so the
true cost to the consumer is that they pay more than I pay and they get a
tire that is almost *never* mounted correctly, at least not to the exacting
standards that tires are *supposed* to be mounted).

It's true that some people look at the tire-mounting problem the same as
they look at this video-editing problem, where, to them, the cost inherent
in finding the right way in freeware to do things is prohibitive. They'd
rather pay for the convenience of some other tool - which is fine - but a
pure cost:time decision doesn't take into account the full picture.

There is pleasure that people derive from having never in the past few
decades NOT found freeware that did fundamentally what the payware does.

For example:
Is there any useful pay functionalitythat doesn't have a free alternative?
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.mobile.android/QL9US7YMxbs/xoRXAIXIAgAJ

The point is that the suggestion of the $40/year payware is a good one if
we were running a business where time is more important than money or
personal satisfaction - but there's a certain amount of personal
satisfaction from never once having failed to find freeware that does every
job that anyone has ever found that Payware does (at least for my needs).

Just as I derive personal satisfaction out of properly repairing my
neighbor's punctured tires on the spot with an inside patchplug, there are
those who derive pleasure from knowledge they have that freeware does
everything that payware does, only at a different type of cost.

He who is J. P. Gilliver (John) said on Thu, 28 Sep 2017 18:47:05 +0100:

Unfortunately, the Windows 10 newsgroup is not archived by deja-google.

I was going to say there is more to life than deja-google ...

I've been on Usenet since before Dejanews, so, yeah, I'm familiar with all
the relevant newsgroups.

FWIW, I had been thinking of suggesting VirtualDub too, but I didn't
know if it could blank or blur parts; I've used it mainly for format
conversion (without terrible results that parts of this thread have
suggested; I don't know if it can use mp4s though) and cropping (which
it does fine).

VirtualDub is currently a non starter simply because it doesn't appear to
handle MP4 files based on the information to date.

There's nothing magical about MP4 files; but that's what they are.

I'm on Android 4.3 where the screen-recording software available vastly
opened up later, in Android 4.4, but even so, since I'm rooted, I could
probably find other screen-recording software that may create AVI container
files instead of MP4 (or maybe ScreenRec freeware can change its output
format - I haven't checked yet).

In addition, I could use Super or Handbrake freeware to convert the MP4 to
almost anything, but again, that's against the spirit of the quest which is
to find a "face off" functionality to any given Android-recorded video
clip, where MP4 is a pretty common standard for Android, I would think.

Since wanting to blur a face or sign or street name or address (etc) in an
Android-created video is likely a common enough need, I'm confident we'll
find someone here who has the technical wherewithal and experience who will
advise us as to the best universal approach for Windows to do the task
quickly and for free.

Never once in my life have I not found freeware to perform a specific task
I needed to have done, so I'm confident we'll find the solution here also.
We just need to find someone on this ng who has done it with freeware.

On 9/28/2017 2:26 PM, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Neil
writes:
On 9/28/2017 1:42 PM, harry newton wrote:
[]
https://filmora.wondershare.com/
[]
. Filmora will put the effect on the face it detected.
So the functionality seems to be called "face off", which I will
search to
see if freeware Windows programs have this "face-off" feature set.

Well, good luck with all of that. I've used the "paid" version of
Filmora with Win10 for a couple of years, and can tell you that it is
capable of the task in more than one way. I mentioned the simplest.
Quite frankly, your time must not be worth much to avoid the cost of
that program. This topic alone would have paid for it a few times over
at my rate.

To save others wondering: as far as I can tell from the above page, it's
$40. And that's a yearly fee, not an outright price.

To save even more wondering, you have to go a few pages deeper to
actually purchase the program, and one option is a lifetime license
charge of $59.99US for use on one PC. It is an "outright price" that I
paid a couple of years ago and I get regular updates for free.

https://filmora.wondershare.com/shop/buy/buy-video-editor.html

Filmora does more than programs that I used with earlier versions of
Windows and Mac (Avid, for one) at less than 5% of their cost.

Spend your time however you wish, but if one asks for a solution and one
is provided, it might be a good investment to at least check it out.

--
best regards,

Neil

On 9/28/2017 2:48 PM, harry newton wrote:
He who is J. P. Gilliver (John) said on Thu, 28 Sep 2017 19:26:52 +0100:

Quite frankly, your time must not be worth much to avoid the cost of
that program. This topic alone would have paid for it a few times
over at my rate.

To save others wondering: as far as I can tell from the above page,
it's $40. And that's a yearly fee, not an outright price.

Thank you both, J.P.Gilliver & Neil for your observations & information.

To Mr. Gilliver, I thank you for finding the cost, which I always amortize
over ten years that we stick with any given great tool, so in this case, it
costs $400 to block out data in a video used to post to the Internet once
to block out SSID/BBSID information in a WiFi video.

No, it will cost you $59.99 for a lifetime license for one PC with free
updates. See my reply to Mr. Gilliver for a link to the purchase page.

--
best regards,

Neil

He who is newshound said on Thu, 28 Sep 2017 19:03:54 +0100:
I'm currently using Shotcut (for simpler things than that) and am pretty
impressed. I *think* I have seen this done on one of their demo videos
where they applied stabilisation to a hand-held "interview" type of
thing, then used cropping to get rid of the blurry edges.

If Shotcut can handle MP4, I think this suggestion moves it to the top!
https://www.shotcut.org/features/

Googling we find more than what was found on the canonical Shotcut site:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=tutorial+shotcut+blur+face+-filmora

- How to Blur a Video - Shotcut Tutorial
http://gadoga.com/en/how-to-blur-sensor-video-shotcut-tutorial.html

This tutorial shows two ways, a blur, and a text block overlay:
- How to Blur & Obscure Part of an image with Shotcut
https://youtu.be/VErftj1fUHs

This tutorial explains the method a bit deeper:
https://plus.google.com/+JamesWoo/posts/ht9mvmRDs6r
"Shotcut does not have a blur filter per se, but this workaround achieves a
similar result. This is used if you want to blur some text (eg off a number
plate, t-shirt) or someone's face, when you have already recorded a video,
and there's no way of re-shooting the video."

Note that other solutions were found in that search, where, as is often the
case with freeware, multiple best-in-class solutions are cascaded:
How to blur faces in video
http://www.tinkernut.com/2010/02/how-to-blur-faces-in-videos/
Where that tutorial utilized the following softwa
http://www.formatoz.com
http://audacity.sourceforge.net
http://www.debugmode.com/wax
http://www.codecguide.com/download_kl.htm

I don't know yet if Shotcut can handle MP4, but if it does, it seems pretty
clear that Shotcut is, so far, the best and easiest suggested way to
blur/obscure a selected area in an MP4 video using existent Windows
freeware.

In message , Neil
writes:
[]
Quite frankly, your time must not be worth much to avoid the cost of
that program. This topic alone would have paid for it a few times
over at my rate.

To save others wondering: as far as I can tell from the above page,
it's $40. And that's a yearly fee, not an outright price.

To save even more wondering, you have to go a few pages deeper to
actually purchase the program, and one option is a lifetime license
charge of $59.99US for use on one PC. It is an "outright price" that I
paid a couple of years ago and I get regular updates for free.

https://filmora.wondershare.com/shop/buy/buy-video-editor.html

Ah, sorry. I found the site far from easy to navigate (for a start, it
doesn't render properly in my preferred browser).
[]
Spend your time however you wish, but if one asks for a solution and
one is provided, it might be a good investment to at least check it out.

Well, I and (I think) the OP would consider $60 more than we'd want to
shell out for occasional or (I think he might have said it was) a
one-off need.

Your mention of "at my rate" suggests you're looking at this as a
professional rather than personal task - or, you price your private time
the same as your professional time. That latter is a personal choice,
which I've often thought of following, but I often can't bring myself to
do so (in this case spend $60). If I was doing it as part of
professional employment, I might thing differently.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

He who is Neil said on Thu, 28 Sep 2017 15:18:51 -0400:

No, it will cost you $59.99 for a lifetime license for one PC with free
updates. See my reply to Mr. Gilliver for a link to the purchase page.

I thank you again for the link to "how" the payware does the job, because
it's always good to have in the dejanews record the tribal knowledge for
the future of three things related to that paywa
1. That there is payware that does the face-blurring job
2. How that payware does the face-blurring job
3. How much that payware costs (in this case, $60) to do that job

This is all good information, and relevant to the quest of finding freeware
to do a "similar" (if not exactly the same" job, suitable for the informal
presentations we often provide on Usenet.

Payware isn't free.
Freeware isn't free.

The costs are just in different places.

For freeware, the cost is the cost required to obtain the expert knowledge
of how to do it using canonical freeware software to do the job.

It's important to note I that never in the past few decades have I not been
able to find freeware that essentially does the job that payware
purportedly does, so I would expect the same 100% success rate with the
task of blocking out static blocks of text as shown in this screenshot from
my Android phone:
http://i64.tinypic.com/27xi5hf.jpg

After watching the first tutorial, these seem to be two potentially viable
methods to test to be able to block out faces or street signs or any static
bit of information in an MP4 video created on an Android phone and then
uploaded to Windows 10.

- How to Blur & Obscure Part of an image with Shotcut
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VErftj1fUHs

To blur:
- Copy a video so you have two tracks & mute the audio of one track
- On one track, crop to just the face or street sign
- Then size & position that cropped area onto the original video
- Then blur that size & position (which sits on top of the original video)

To block:
- Create a block of blank text of any background color desired
- Set the block background saturation color output channel to 255
- Drag that blank-text block over your desired area to block out

I don't know yet if MP4 is supported in Shotcut, but that's the only
research hurdle left before testing it out later tonight (I have a meeting
to run to at the moment).

On 9/28/2017 3:31 PM, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Neil
writes:
[]
Quite frankly, your time must not be worth much to avoid the cost of
that program. This topic alone would have paid for it a few times
overÂ* at my rate.

To save others wondering: as far as I can tell from the above page,
it'sÂ* $40. And that's a yearly fee, not an outright price.

To save even more wondering, you have to go a few pages deeper to
actually purchase the program, and one option is a lifetime license
charge of $59.99US for use on one PC. It is an "outright price" that I
paid a couple of years ago and I get regular updates for free.

https://filmora.wondershare.com/shop/buy/buy-video-editor.html

Ah, sorry. I found the site far from easy to navigate (for a start, it
doesn't render properly in my preferred browser).
[]
Spend your time however you wish, but if one asks for a solution and
one is provided, it might be a good investment to at least check it out.

Well, I and (I think) the OP would consider $60 more than we'd want to
shell out for occasional or (I think he might have said it was) a
one-off need.

Your mention of "at my rate" suggests you're looking at this as a
professional rather than personal task - or, you price your private time
the same as your professional time. That latter is a personal choice,
which I've often thought of following, but I often can't bring myself to
do so (in this case spend $60). If I was doing it as part of
professional employment, I might thing differently.

Anything that consumes my time is a cost, regardless of whether I'm
compensated for it. Spending unlimited time searching for "free"
options, learning how to use them, discovering that they won't do what
you wanted after all, rinse and repeat.

A wise friend once told me, "Money comes and goes; time only goes!"

--
best regards,

Neil

He who is Neil said on Thu, 28 Sep 2017 15:16:15 -0400:

Filmora does more than programs that I used with earlier versions of
Windows and Mac (Avid, for one) at less than 5% of their cost.

Filmora looks great! It seems to be perfect payware for the job, especially
as it seems to "follow" the faces as they move across the screen (which
isn't needed in this particular application but which is a nice to have
feature).

Thank you very much for suggesting the Filmora tools as they show:
a. The job can be done
b. How the job can be done
c. And at what cost ($60)

Spend your time however you wish, but if one asks for a solution and one
is provided, it might be a good investment to at least check it out.

I am not sure what you mean by "check it out" because:
a. Payware isn't free
b. Freeware isn't free

The cost of freeware is that the knowledge of the best tools is an expense
that doesn't just come to you for free. Like any knowledge (e.g., knowledge
of chemistry, physics, politics, psychology, etc.) you can't just "pay for
the knowledge". You have to ask pertinent questions and run pertinent labs.

In all the sciences, labs are critical.
But labs cost time.

Testing out freeware (or payware for that matter) costs time.
There's no way around it other than to ask for an expert who has done it
who can save you time.

In some cases, the expert might say that the freeware sucks so badly that
the *only* way to get the job done is with payware - but - in my decades in
Usenet, I have never once NOT found freeware that did the job that payware
does.

Hence, I'm confident that we will find an easy-to-use well-documented
freeware solution that is, in the end, far more useful to the group as a
whole, than is the suggestion to use a particular payware.

EVERYONE can INSTANTLY benefit from the freeware solution.
Only some will benefit from a payware solution.

Both have their merits, since, as I said, neither freeware nor payware is
actually free. Both have a cost/benefit ratio, which isn't only measured in
dollars or minutes but which includes dollars, minutes, QOR, leverage,
personal satisfaction, reuse, etc. as part of the correct complete
equation.

Just like I get benefits from being able to properly repair and balance a
punctured tire at home in about 15 minutes, the cost of being able to do
that included not only the $300 in tools but in the immense knowledge that
I gained in researching HOW to do it (and in fixing/replacing/balancing
about 25 tires/wheels to date).

Gaining knowledge is expensive - but can be leveraged to the entire
newsgroup far better than payware can be leveraged to that same huge
audience.

See knowledge gained, for example, at:
"I broke down and bought the Harbor Freight Pittsburgh Bead Breaker"
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.home.repair/ZerL-eG7GlQ/3Zby5OK-CgAJ

Knowledge isn't gained for free.

He who is J. P. Gilliver (John) said on Thu, 28 Sep 2017 20:31:39 +0100:

Well, I and (I think) the OP would consider $60 more than we'd want to
shell out for occasional or (I think he might have said it was) a
one-off need.

Yes. It's a one-time need (but knowledge is reusable!).

All I want to do is post a video of my WiFI signal strength over time, but
without the BSSID/SSID privacy leaks: http://i64.tinypic.com/27xi5hf.jpg

Your mention of "at my rate" suggests you're looking at this as a
professional rather than personal task - or, you price your private time
the same as your professional time.

Payware isn't free; freeware isn't free.
The knowledge needed to run the best freeware to do all jobs needed is
expensive in terms of time - just as my knowledge of decibels and calculus
was expensive - but knowledge can be re-used - just as I recently used my
knowledge to set up a Wi-Fi access point that can feed my Internet to my
neighbor who can literally be miles away line of sight, and I set up a
Wi-Fi station that can grab his Internet from miles away LOS.

Knowledge isn't free.
But knowledge can be leveraged.

Just like I leveraged that WiFi knowledge here yesterday:
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.home.repair/Y6bIYqeZ3qk/1N8md8BBCAAJ

That's what we're doing here.

Leveraging our combined tribal knowledge so that *anyone* can get the job
done, and not just those willing to shell out $60 for what amounts to a
one-time personal need.

That latter is a personal choice,
which I've often thought of following, but I often can't bring myself to
do so (in this case spend $60). If I was doing it as part of
professional employment, I might thing differently.

Just as in repairing and mounting and balancing your own tires would be an
entirely different equation if your vehicle was a work vehicle than if you
do it in your spare time, the same is true here.

Everything is different for the cost/benefit tradeoff calculations if
you're doing a job versus if you're just some guy in his pajamas wanting to
obscure his BSSID on a video he created on his Android phone to show
someone else how a wifi signal-strength app works over a period of time.

Business decisions rarely leverage to free portable solutions for everyone;
but in this case, the tribal effort involved will almost certainly result
in an easy-to-implement solution that everyone can use at any time.

At the moment, the most likely suggested solution is Shotcut freeware,
using either the blur-selected-area approach or the cover-with-opaque-block
approach, both of which seem easily enough implemented from the videos I've
seen so far.