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How does my very first edited video (using Shotcut freeware) look?



 
 
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  #1  
Old October 10th 17, 09:21 AM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.windows7.general
harry newton
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Posts: 283
Default How does my very first edited video (using Shotcut freeware) look?

How does my very first Windows-edited video (using Shotcut freeware) look?
https://www.sendspace.com/file/gvckbe

Thanks to suggestions in this newsgroup, I was able to edit my first MP4
video, which, in this case, was just a screen recording of five-year-old
Android 4.3 functionality to show the iOS users that even their newest
devices don't have similar capabilities.
http://wetakepic.com/images/2017/10/10/wifi1.jpg

But the point here is just to ask you what you think of it, and to let you
know the fundamental techniques used so that you can do the same should you
wish to edit videos from Android to Windows over the LAN.
http://wetakepic.com/images/2017/10/10/wifi2.jpg

Here's what I did to create that 3-minute video:
http://wetakepic.com/images/2017/10/10/wifi3.jpg

Android freewa
"FRITZ!App WLAN" (de.avm.android.wlanapp) version 1.2.1
"FTP Server (Free)" (be.ppareit.sw3iftp_free) version 2.14.1
"KingoROOT" (com.kingoapp.apk) version 4.2.5
"RecMe" (com.mobzapp.recme.free) version 2.3.3

Windows freewa
"FileZilla" FTP client freeware, version 3.28.0
"Shotcut" video editing freeware, version 17.09.04

Since only on Android 4.4+, did screen recording apparently arrive to the
unrooted masses, I used "RecMe" freeware on a KingoRoot rooted Android 4.3
phone and I used "FRITZ!AQpp WLAN" freeware to graph WiFi signal strength
over time and I used FTP Server Free to allow the Windows FileZilla client
to copy the file wirelessly over the LAN on WiFi.

NOTE: If you're on Android 4.4+, you have more options for screen recording
than I did on Android 4.3 where I used "RecMe" to record the screen.

Check RecMe settings to ensure the smallest decent quality video size:
Storage: /storage/emulated/0/recordings/record_yyyymmdd_hhmmss.{mp4,mkv}
File type: (MP4) or MKV
Audio source: Microphone
Encoding bitrate: 64 Kbit/s
Use hardware encoding: On
Resolution: 480p (480x854)
Encoding bitrate: 4096 Kbit/s
Max framerate: 30 fps
Auto rotate: off

I transferred the MP4 file over the WiFi LAN using FTP Server (Free) on
Android and FileZilla on Windows (SCP would have worked as well, but I've
file that the Windows File Explorer is flaky with FTP URUs).

On Windows 10, I opened the file in Shotcut freeware.
https://www.shotcut.org/download/

Shotcut takes getting used to if you've never edited video before, where a
golden rule is to copy the "video preview" to the "timeline" and to always
be aware of the current position of your "play head".

The fundamental approach is to create a series of delimited start-and-stop
points, where you add "filters" that do whatever you need done, which, in
my case, was a lot of obfuscated/redacted text that revealed private
information that Android recorded.

To cut out sections of video was as simple as locating the start and stop
points with your "play head", and then "ripple delete" the section.

To add an audio track was as simple as downloading an arbitrary MP3 file
from any of the license-free sites such as:
Creative Commons http://creativecommons.org/legalmusicforvideos
Music for Video http://music-for-video.com/
Vimeo Music Store http://vimeo.com/musicstore
YouTube Audio Library https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary
etc.

And then adding a blank "audio track" and putting the audio into that audio
track, fading in and out as desired using "filters".

Speaking of filters, basically filters are everything. They're like the
nails that the framers use to frame a house. The filters are what I used to
redact text. The filter is what I used to mute the original audio. The
filters are what I used to fade out the audio at the end. The filters are
almost everything.

Fundamentally, I created a "text filter" to block out (aka redact) private
information, where a drawback was that the redacted area isn't "smart".
It's static. That was a pain.

A lesson hard learned was that the only character that doesn't work for
blocking text is the most logical character you'd use, which is the space
character. If you set a filter with a background of blue and a font of blue
it will *look* like it's redacted while you preview the file *inside* of
Shotcut - but - when you export - the redactions will NOT show up - and
there will be no error. The solution, I belatedly learned, was to use any
character *other* than the most obvious character, where I used "xxxxx" and
that worked just fine.

Speaking of exporting, exporting the video was as simply as hitting the
export button. This puts together the whole set of clips in the timeline,
both audio and video. The number of options on the export are mind
boggling; but the defaults seem to work just fine by all accounts.

This is getting kind of long, so, that's a quick rendition of the software,
steps, and lessons learned.

What do you think of the video?
https://www.sendspace.com/file/gvckbe
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  #2  
Old October 10th 17, 10:25 AM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.windows7.general
UnsteadyKen
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Posts: 73
Default How does my very first edited video (using Shotcut freeware) look?

In article , lid says...
http://wetakepic.com/images/2017/10/10/wifi1.jpg

Sorry, you can't watch this content as a guest.
Please create an account to continue.

--
Ken
  #3  
Old October 10th 17, 12:16 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.windows7.general
Andy Burns[_6_]
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Posts: 1,318
Default How does my very first edited video (using Shotcut freeware)look?

UnsteadyKen wrote:

lid wrote:

http://wetakepic.com/images/2017/10/10/wifi1.jpg


Sorry, you can't watch this content as a guest.
Please create an account to continue.


No such restriction here ...


  #4  
Old October 10th 17, 12:51 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.windows7.general
UnsteadyKen
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Posts: 73
Default How does my very first edited video (using Shotcut freeware) look?

In article ,
says...
No such restriction here ...

I know, I pasted the wrong link, the message is from the video hosting
site


--
Ken
  #5  
Old October 10th 17, 12:53 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.windows7.general
David_B
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Posts: 92
Default How does my very first edited video (using Shotcut freeware)look?

On 10-Oct-17 10:25 AM, UnsteadyKen wrote:
In article , lid says...
http://wetakepic.com/images/2017/10/10/wifi1.jpg

Sorry, you can't watch this content as a guest.
Please create an account to continue.


I see that message too! :-)

--
David B.

  #6  
Old October 10th 17, 02:51 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.windows7.general
Mayayana
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Posts: 6,438
Default How does my very first edited video (using Shotcut freeware) look?

"harry newton" wrote

| What do you think of the video?
| https://www.sendspace.com/file/gvckbe

Once I turned off the sound (yikes!) I got a clear
video of blacked-out areas. I think the CIA would be
interested in this for pseudo-compliance with FIA
requests.

Seriously, though, while I don't get the point it
does seem like you got the functionality you wanted.


  #7  
Old October 10th 17, 03:26 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.windows7.general
Shadow
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Posts: 1,638
Default How does my very first edited video (using Shotcut freeware) look?

On Tue, 10 Oct 2017 08:21:15 +0000 (UTC), harry newton
wrote:

How does my very first Windows-edited video (using Shotcut freeware) look?
https://www.sendspace.com/file/gvckbe


Looks fine to me. I would have cut the music out. Wastes 10MB
out of the 26MB total, and adds nothing to content.
Neat the way you cut out the MAC addresses (bit pointless,
anyone within range can capture them, and Google logs even your
passwords ....)
But neat ....
Kudos.
[]'s

PS To those having trouble with downloads --- just block
Google datamining with your hosts file, and you won't be redirected to
a login page.

--
Don't be evil - Google 2004
We have a new policy - Google 2012
  #8  
Old October 10th 17, 04:43 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.windows7.general
Paul[_32_]
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Posts: 11,873
Default How does my very first edited video (using Shotcut freeware)look?

harry newton wrote:
How does my very first Windows-edited video (using Shotcut freeware) look?
https://www.sendspace.com/file/gvckbe


Even though the Sendspace is visually distracting,
the Download button still worked to download the wifi.mp4 file.

My download rate here was 80,000 bytes/sec on a 27,470,232 byte
video. About 343 seconds (5 minutes, time for a snack).

It looks like a video of a cellphone screen :-)

With some floating blue rectangles.

2916 frames.

Paul

  #9  
Old October 10th 17, 05:22 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.windows7.general
harry newton
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Posts: 283
Default How does my very first edited video (using Shotcut freeware) look?

He who is UnsteadyKen said on Tue, 10 Oct 2017 12:51:59 +0100:

I know, I pasted the wrong link, the message is from the video hosting
site


Thank you for trying where I apologize if you couldn't download the MP4
file (it looks like others could), but I see you wanted to watch it in
streaming, which I can't blame you. I'd want to do the same.

I had searched for registration-free video upload sites that allow
streaming, but I couldn't find any. So if you know of one, I'd be glad to
upload to that site for you to stream from.

The only registration-free sites I know of that will handle the large size
of videos are these "binary" upload sites.

Send Space
https://www.sendspace.com/
File is deleted if not uploaded in 30 days.
Users get a link to an ad-filled page.
Tiny Upload
https://tinyupload.com
File Dropper
http://www.filedropper.com/
Upload Files
https://uploadfiles.io/
Files.FM
https://files.fm/
Zippy Share
http://www.zippyshare.com/
GeTT
http://ge.tt/
Drop Canvas
https://dropcanvas.com

If one of those works for video streaming by the recipient, I'd be glad to
try it.

Does anyone know of any video-streaming site that has registration-free
uploads?
  #10  
Old October 10th 17, 05:24 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.windows7.general
harry newton
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Posts: 283
Default How does my very first edited video (using Shotcut freeware) look?

He who is Mayayana said on Tue, 10 Oct 2017 09:51:05 -0400:

| What do you think of the video?
| https://www.sendspace.com/file/gvckbe

Once I turned off the sound (yikes!) I got a clear
video of blacked-out areas. I think the CIA would be
interested in this for pseudo-compliance with FIA
requests.

Seriously, though, while I don't get the point it
does seem like you got the functionality you wanted.


Yikes. Mayayana ...

Ae you saying you can *see* through the blacked-out areas such that you can
see the underlying SSID's and other BSSID information in the wireless
access points?

If so, please let me know immediately, as the entire point was to maintain
privacy while uploading a video that happened to contain a lot of
privacy-revealing information!
  #11  
Old October 10th 17, 05:43 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.windows7.general
harry newton
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Posts: 283
Default How does my very first edited video (using Shotcut freeware) look?

He who is Shadow said on Tue, 10 Oct 2017 11:26:38 -0300:

How does my very first Windows-edited video (using Shotcut freeware) look?
https://www.sendspace.com/file/gvckbe


Looks fine to me. I would have cut the music out. Wastes 10MB
out of the 26MB total, and adds nothing to content.


Thanks Shadow for that advice to cut the obnoxious free music.

In all honesty, I couldn't get Shotcut to cut the original audio track out,
which contained the grand kids saying stuff in the background so I didn't
want that on there. So I tried to overpower the original audio with the
license-free audio - which I also wanted to test out.

I could get shotcut to "mute" the original audio - but I was couldn't split
the audio track off the video - so I was afraid that the audio could be
"extracted" in the download.

Since you're the second person to mention the obnoxious audio track, I'll
concentrate on learning how to really remove the audio (not just mute it)
in Shotcut. Thanks for that advice as this was my first video-editing
endeavor using freeware.

Neat the way you cut out the MAC addresses (bit pointless,
anyone within range can capture them,


I learned that the *hardest* thing for video editing freeware to do is to
"blur faces" and "follow them" (which is the same thing we want for MAC
addresses).

So I had to constantly snip the video because I had scrolled up and down to
show the various access points (which was a feature of the Android
capability). But each time I scrolled, the MAC address moved, so I had to
snip and use filters each time it moved.

I haven't yet found a freeware video editor that can "follow" a blur, so
this limitation may very well simply be a limitation in the freeware that
we have to live with (since I don't need to edit videos all that much).

and Google logs even your passwords ....)


Hmmmmmmm... are you sure? I presume you're talking about how most Android
phones are misconfigured by the user to allow Google to capture every
SSID/BSSID and GPS location and signal strength that the Android phone can
capture.

I know that Google "gets" all that information from your neighbor's badly
misconfigured Android phones even if you *hide* the broadcast of the SSID
and even if you add "_nomap" to the end of the SSID.
a. Your access point SSID
b. Your access point BSSID (it's the MAC address that is not changeable)
c. The GPS location of your neighbor's Android phone tracking you
d. The signal strength the Android phone sees of your access point

While Google "gets" that information from your neighbor's misconfigured
Android phone, AFAIK, Google "says" they scrub that information from the
database under those two conditions:
a. You hide the SSID broadcast (which has other problems), and/or,
b. You appended "_nomap" to the SSID

Even so, I didn't know that "passphrases" are captured by your neighbor's
misconfigured Android phones.

Are you sure about that potential privacy leak?

PS To those having trouble with downloads --- just block
Google datamining with your hosts file, and you won't be redirected to
a login page.


I apologize if that site sucks. I did download the video myself after I had
uploaded it, but, I don't recall it being a big hassle. Then again, as you
noted, I have the MVP Hosts file which blocks over 15 thousand obnoxious
web sites, and I'm pretty sure Mayayana has helped me in the past add all
the Google crapsites to that list (yes, Mayayana, I'll get to Acrylic DNS
someday so that I can use asterisks instead of the HOSTS file static
method).

To the point of making the download easier for others, I'd be perfectly
happy to use some other registration-free upload site to post the video.

I posted a few moments ago a list of registration-free "binary" upload
sites. I can't find a registration-free "video" upload & streaming download
site yet.

If anyone knows of a registration-free (probably ad-supported) video-upload
and download-streaming site, that would be a bonus!
  #12  
Old October 10th 17, 06:13 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.windows7.general
harry newton
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Posts: 283
Default How does my very first edited video (using Shotcut freeware) look?

He who is Paul said on Tue, 10 Oct 2017 11:43:52 -0400:

Even though the Sendspace is visually distracting,
the Download button still worked to download the wifi.mp4 file.
My download rate here was 80,000 bytes/sec on a 27,470,232 byte
video. About 343 seconds (5 minutes, time for a snack).
It looks like a video of a cellphone screen :-)
With some floating blue rectangles.


Thanks for testing that out Paul because it was my first time doing things
that I would think others here would also want to do.

1. Record "stuff" on Android & bring it over Wi-Fi to Windows for editing
2. Edit a "video" on Windows with (the best so far) video-editing freeware
3. Upload that video to a registration-free binary upload/download site

You are completely correct in your assessment that it's a video of a
cellphone screen with some floating blue rectangles on it! (Your forgot it
also had an obnoxious free music overlay to cover up the grandkid's in the
background.)

The "editing" tasks that had to be surmounted we
A. We had to find the "best" (so far) freeware video editor on Windows.
B. It had to allow us to edit the video & audio on Windows
C. So that private information was redacted (both video & audio)

Trust me when I say I would have *loved* to not have to have those floating
blue rectangles, which were simply "blank" text boxes where both the font
and the background were the same color (and where the only character that
doesn't work but there is no error telling you why is the most obvious
character of blank "spaces").

My main worry is privacy since uploading videos is harder than uploading
images. For uploading images, there are plenty of no-registration web
sites, for example:
Cube Upload http://cubeupload.com
Post Image http://postimage.io
Image Titan http://www.imagetitan.com
We Take Pic http://wetakepic.com http://pictr.com
ImgUr http://imgur.com
Bild.Me http://bild.me
File Convoy http://fileconvoy.com
Share Photo http://share.pho.to
Turbo Image Host https://www.turboimagehost.com
Tiny Pic http://tinypic.com
etc.

But I couldn't find a no-registration "video" upload/streaming site, so if
you know of one, that would help everyone who needs to upload a video while
maintaining privacy.

As for the content, I realize and state openly that I admit that a simple
voice over would have explained the content sufficiently - but what I need
is voice-obfuscation software (to fuel my privacy fetish) so if you know of
good Windows voice-obfuscation freeware - that would be a plus.

Without voice obfuscation, I was left to popping up little text boxes,
which I did in the beginning but I assumed that the specific target
audience would see that the video showed things that Android could do five
years ago that iOS can't hope to do today (but this Windows thread is NOT
about that topic).

This Windows thread is just a tribal-knowledge sharing where I'm giving
back to the team (who suggested Shotcut in the first place) and asking how
to improve the results (which, Lord knows, are amateurish ... I know).

The good news is that Shotcut is a winner. It's pretty hard to use (someone
just suggested VideoPad Editor freeware, which I'm also testing, but it
seems to be really commercial ware in the guise of tease-ware - but time
will tell).

In the end, the price of freeware is in finding the best one to spend
energy on, where Shotcut "seems" to fit the moniker of being the
"canonical" free video editor (other than, perhaps, Windows Movie Maker,
which technically is "free to me" I guess - but I didn't try it).

Thanks for all your helpful advice.
I will always try to give back to the ng so that the tribal knowledge
increases from all my efforts.
  #13  
Old October 10th 17, 06:37 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.windows7.general
Mayayana
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Posts: 6,438
Default How does my very first edited video (using Shotcut freeware) look?

"harry newton" wrote

|
| Ae you saying you can *see* through the blacked-out areas such that you
can
| see the underlying SSID's and other BSSID information in the wireless
| access points?

No. I just meant the video is clear and the
blackouts look fine.


  #14  
Old October 10th 17, 08:25 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.windows7.general
harry newton
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Posts: 283
Default How does my very first edited video (using Shotcut freeware) look?

He who is Mayayana said on Tue, 10 Oct 2017 13:37:40 -0400:

| Ae you saying you can *see* through the blacked-out areas?
No. I just meant the video is clear and the
blackouts look fine.


Whew! Thanks for confirming that the "redacted" SSIDs and BSSIDs remained
obscured.

My worry, as it would be with EXIF thumbnail information in a JPEG, or
"login" information in a Word document, is that I don't know how an MP4 can
be "disassembled" out of its component parts.

For example, can the original audio (of the grandkids talking in the
background) be pulled out easily from the MP4 I uploaded? Or can the
underlying areas I thought I obscured be reconstructed out of "layers" such
as those we find in PNG files?

I don't know.
Does anyone know if an MP4 can be "disassembled" such that the original
audio and original underlying information that was "redacted" by
"obscuring" can easily be recovered?

(HINT: I'm not talking about state-sponsored adversaries but just
adversaries who happen to be experts on the file formats.)
  #15  
Old October 10th 17, 08:39 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.windows7.general
Mayayana
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Posts: 6,438
Default How does my very first edited video (using Shotcut freeware) look?

"harry newton" wrote

| Or can the
| underlying areas I thought I obscured be reconstructed out of "layers"
such
| as those we find in PNG files?
|

Isn't the mp4 composed of a series of bitmaps?
A bitmap defines a grid of pixels. If you paint black
over a rectangle then those pixels are black. They
can't be two things. It's not like spraypainting.

A PNG is just a compressed bitmap with an alpha
channel option, which means one can specify a degree
of blending with the background when painting the
image in order to give an effect of transparency.

There are no layers. Didn't we talk about this recently?
Someone was asking about image layers. Images don't
have layers. Graphic editors can sometimes allow
working with layers, and they can save that data in their
own formats. But that's not an image with layers. It's
a record of digital edits. That function led someone to
think that image formats have layers. They do not. A
raster image is a bitmap. That's it.


 




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