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

He who is Neil said on Thu, 28 Sep 2017 15:53:49 -0400:

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!"

By that single-minded argument, you expending any time to learn something
(e.g., chemistry or physics or politics or mathematics, etc., "is a cost",
regardless of whether you're compensated for it.

Yet, the knowledge gained at the cost of time & effort, isn't useless.

If you already think you know everything there is to know, then yes, any
further time spent learning is wasted on you. But I don't think you really
think the way you just said you think.

IMHO, you can disagree with my next assertion, but I can tell you I have a
vast amount of knowledge which didn't come for free.

While I have ivy-league credentials just like many of you do, that
knowledge didn't only come at a monetary cost. That knowledge buildup has
been a life-long endeavor of mine.

The result are everywhere in my life, e.g., the fact I retired at a very
young age, but the results are also that there is likely nothing that I
have ever endeavored to do on a computer that I didn't find a freeware
solution that did it.

What's that knowledge worth to me?
Not much. A few thousand dollars at best.

But what's that knowledge worth if I can leverage it to tens of thousands
of people every day.

A lot more.

Methinks you're just looking at the problem from a more narrow-minded
standpoint, since I think we have, at the expense of a few Usenet posts,
found a potentially viable solution in Shotcut already.

I do thank you for the suggestion of the payware though, as we can always
learn a lot by comparing the freeware functionality to the payware
functionality for this one-time volunteer effort to help someone on Usenet
understand the Android capability of WiFI recording of signal strength over
time.

On 09/28/2017 12:05 PM, harry newton wrote:
He who is Big Al said on Thu, 28 Sep 2017 10:49:08 -0400:

I did a lot of editing years ago with a paid version (yes I know, the
OP wanted free, but..) of Magix Movie Maker in Win7 or 8(?).Â* It
allowed multiple video layers (as well as audio).Â*Â* It had no ability
to edit the video as you want, but I would think you might be able to
make a transparent PNG image of a black rectangle(s) and put it in a
2nd video track or overlay or whatever the programs term is.Â*Â* It
would be an engineering feat to get the black spots to fit in one PNG
but...

I've used Avidemux lately but only to convert formats, trim and
brightness levels.

One of the two great advantages of Payware is that Payware tells you the
possibilities of what can be done with freeware. The second great advantage
of Payware is that it gives you a *technique* for solving the problem (and
usually lots of good search keywords).

So this overlaying of a black PNG rectangle technology makes sense for the
task of blocking out or blurring out certain areas of a video.
But would only be successful if the video does not move around on the
screen. Or at least much, as you could reposition the PNG now and
then but you'd like it to be as simple as possible.

On 28/09/2017 19:05, Neil wrote:
On 9/28/2017 1:42 PM, harry newton wrote:

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.


I'm not against paying for software. Based on good reviews and in spite
of my limited requirement for video editing, I bought Pinnacle in Win7
or Win8 days, and put some effort into learning the user interface. So I
was not best pleased to find my version not supported by Win10. I
wouldn't have objected to a modest update fee but Pinnacle's attitude
was "Stuff you".

And it wasn't as good as Shotcut.

On 28/09/2017 20:25, harry newton wrote:
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.

It's certainly fine with MP4. Here's one I made earlier. MP4 from a
Canon Legria.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPHwPgHuRfo

On 9/28/2017 4:23 PM, harry newton wrote:
He who is Neil said on Thu, 28 Sep 2017 15:53:49 -0400:

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!"

By that single-minded argument, you expending any time to learn something
(e.g., chemistry or physics or politics or mathematics, etc., "is a cost",
regardless of whether you're compensated for it.

Yet, the knowledge gained at the cost of time & effort, isn't useless.

Education always costs. That doesn't mean that the cost isn't of value
well beyond the investment; the two are not related in that manner.

If you already think you know everything there is to know, then yes, any
further time spent learning is wasted on you. But I don't think you really
think the way you just said you think.

I really do, you just misinterpreted it by conflating cost and value.
Since time is of greater value to me than money, that is what I try not
to waste.

As for "knowing everything there is to know", I'll be the first to tell
you that my knowledge represents a fairly small portion of even a modest
library. I don't have any problem with that.

--
best regards,

Neil

On 9/28/2017 4:46 PM, newshound wrote:
On 28/09/2017 19:05, Neil wrote:
On 9/28/2017 1:42 PM, harry newton wrote:

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.


I'm not against paying for software. Based on good reviews and in spite
of my limited requirement for video editing, I bought Pinnacle in Win7
or Win8 days, and put some effort into learning the user interface. So I
was not best pleased to find my version not supported by Win10. I
wouldn't have objected to a modest update fee but Pinnacle's attitude
was "Stuff you".

And it wasn't as good as Shotcut.

There are many tools out there. I got similarly "nailed" by freeware
that worked for a few months then, without any mention of the
possibility on its website, it locked up unless I wanted to pay an
outrageous amount for "tech support". What a scam.

I don't know Shotcut, so I have no basis for comparison. I do know Avid,
Premiere, and other pro editors, and think that Filmora is as good or
better than they are in some respects with only a couple of areas where
the pro apps can do more. Well worth the money, IMO.

--
best regards,

Neil

In article , Neil
wrote:

. 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.

except that he's just trolling.

In article , Mayayana
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.

i listed two. both still exist.

i also said that most video editors as well as photo editors, if not
all of them, can do that. it's a very basic task.

Big Al wrote:
On 09/28/2017 12:05 PM, harry newton wrote:
He who is Big Al said on Thu, 28 Sep 2017 10:49:08 -0400:

I did a lot of editing years ago with a paid version (yes I know, the
OP wanted free, but..) of Magix Movie Maker in Win7 or 8(?). It
allowed multiple video layers (as well as audio). It had no ability
to edit the video as you want, but I would think you might be able to
make a transparent PNG image of a black rectangle(s) and put it in a
2nd video track or overlay or whatever the programs term is. It
would be an engineering feat to get the black spots to fit in one PNG
but...

I've used Avidemux lately but only to convert formats, trim and
brightness levels.

One of the two great advantages of Payware is that Payware tells you the
possibilities of what can be done with freeware. The second great
advantage
of Payware is that it gives you a *technique* for solving the problem
(and
usually lots of good search keywords).

So this overlaying of a black PNG rectangle technology makes sense for
the
task of blocking out or blurring out certain areas of a video.

But would only be successful if the video does not move around on the
screen. Or at least much, as you could reposition the PNG now and
then but you'd like it to be as simple as possible.

You can probably find code with "subimage within image"
detection capability. And track the field to be erased,
on a frame by frame basis. What makes a project like this
relatively easy, is if the field to be blanked is a static
image with zero noise.

https://github.com/johnoneil/subimag...ster/README.md

*******

With commercial software, you can even try your hand
at blurring faces in a crowd.

https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro...-tracking.html

Paul

On Thu, 28 Sep 2017 13:40:55 +0000 (UTC), harry newton wrote:
Googling is *almost never* the best way to find the best freeware for
certain things because someone who is trying to sell something isn't always
neutral on the pros and cons of the freeware.


Don't use Google. Use DuckDuckGo, or Startpage, or one of the other
search engines.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://BrownMath.com/
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
Shikata ga nai...

Big Al wrote:
On 09/28/2017 12:05 PM, harry newton wrote:
He who is Big Al said on Thu, 28 Sep 2017 10:49:08 -0400:

I did a lot of editing years ago with a paid version (yes I know, the
OP wanted free, but..) of Magix Movie Maker in Win7 or 8(?). It
allowed multiple video layers (as well as audio). It had no ability
to edit the video as you want, but I would think you might be able to
make a transparent PNG image of a black rectangle(s) and put it in a
2nd video track or overlay or whatever the programs term is. It
would be an engineering feat to get the black spots to fit in one PNG
but...

I've used Avidemux lately but only to convert formats, trim and
brightness levels.

One of the two great advantages of Payware is that Payware tells you the
possibilities of what can be done with freeware. The second great
advantage
of Payware is that it gives you a *technique* for solving the problem
(and
usually lots of good search keywords).

So this overlaying of a black PNG rectangle technology makes sense for
the
task of blocking out or blurring out certain areas of a video.
But would only be successful if the video does not move around on the
screen. Or at least much, as you could reposition the PNG now and
then but you'd like it to be as simple as possible.


I found another way to do it, using Imagemagick.

*******

big.bmp # some picture with text to remove
small.bmp # just the text string plus some border area
blank.bmp # image the same size as small.bmp, to be used to erase the field

magick compare -metric rmse -subimage-search big.bmp small.bmp result.bmp

0 (0) @ 501,285
[Also returns two files result-0.bmp and result-1.bmp ...]

magick convert big.bmp blank.bmp -geometry +501+285 -compose over -composite result.bmp

[returns result.bmp, not to be confused with the other two (useless) files]

In this picture, you can see the portion of the image
it zapped. I picked a Google address, similar to the one
above it, but only differing in one digit. And it found
the string OK and the coordinates of where to put the box.

https://s26.postimg.org/xzgf91dm1/result.gif

But the first command was slow, so... don't try this
at home. If you had to do that 60,000 times to fix
every frame in the video, you would be old and gray
before it finished. It would take around 2000 hours.
Even with a ThreadRipper, it's going to take a while.

The "rmse" stands for root mean square error, and I suspect it
moves the small image to every possible position inside
the dimensions of the big image, then computes an error number
based on summing the squares of the differences of all the pixels,
then taking the square root. Comparing all the positions,
and taking the position with the least error. An error of "0"
in this case. If you had multiple instances of the string
to remove, you would run it multiple times. As long as
each run removed an instance, it should find all of them
sooner or later.

It's a lot easier to just drop a rectangle on the video
and have a video editor remove it. As long as the location
it needs is fixed. If the location of the text string
was moving around in the video, then the extra work of
tracking it like above, might be worth it.

Paul

In message , Stan Brown
writes:
On Thu, 28 Sep 2017 13:40:55 +0000 (UTC), harry newton wrote:
Googling is *almost never* the best way to find the best freeware for
certain things because someone who is trying to sell something isn't always
neutral on the pros and cons of the freeware.


Don't use Google. Use DuckDuckGo, or Startpage, or one of the other
search engines.

Is that just because of Google's evil aspects, or do they actually work
better (as search engines, not as anti-evil)?
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

A biochemist walks into a student bar and says to the barman: "I'd like a pint
of adenosine triphosphate, please." "Certainly," says the barman, "that'll be
ATP." (Quoted in) The Independent, 2013-7-13

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote

| Don't use Google. Use DuckDuckGo, or Startpage, or one of the other
| search engines.
|
| Is that just because of Google's evil aspects, or do they actually work
| better (as search engines, not as anti-evil)?

I generally use DDG but turn to Google when I
can't find things. Google seems to be more thorough.
Or maybe they just have more listings. But in genreal
I find they return pretty much the same listings.

On the other hand, all of them have gone downhill.
It's become very difficult, I find, to find less popular and
non-commercial sites. It seems that whatever I search
for, I see the same Wikipedia, Yelp, LinkedIn.... It's
as though the engines think the Internet is 20 sites
and you want one of those. And probably you want
to buy stuff.
Last week I needed to buy a sheet of lexan polycarbonate.
"buy lexan boston" turns up an online seller, Lowes,
Home Depot, Yelp, Hotfrog, Yellow Pages.... A plastics
store in Boston, where I ended up going, was not on
the first page of results. Yet they have a good,
functional website. And there are only a handful of
shops around boston that handle this stuff. So that
store should have been in the top 3.

And my results are free of "customization". If you
allow cookies and script then Google will be trying to
guess what you want to see, or perhaps what you're
likely to open your wallet for.

It also depends on where you are. Just this week
Google agreed, in the EU, to stop trying to shut out
competing shopping services. So in the US it's more
likely that the results will depend on who's paying
Google for a listing. (Even on DDG: eplastics.com
had an ad in my search results and were also near
the top in allegedly non-paid results. Yet I specifically
asked about buying plastic in Boston, not online.)

In message , Mayayana
writes:
[]
the top in allegedly non-paid results. Yet I specifically
asked about buying plastic in Boston, not online.)

How did you specifically specify that?


--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

G B Shaw said: "Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have
made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week."
(quoted by "Dont Bother" [sic], 2015-8-24.)

In article , Mayayana
wrote:

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote

| Don't use Google. Use DuckDuckGo, or Startpage, or one of the other
| search engines.
|
| Is that just because of Google's evil aspects, or do they actually work
| better (as search engines, not as anti-evil)?

I generally use DDG but turn to Google when I
can't find things. Google seems to be more thorough.
Or maybe they just have more listings. But in genreal
I find they return pretty much the same listings.

in other words, it doesn't work as well. no surprise there.

On the other hand, all of them have gone downhill.

nonsense. they've all improved and continue to improve.

It's become very difficult, I find, to find less popular and
non-commercial sites. It seems that whatever I search
for, I see the same Wikipedia, Yelp, LinkedIn.... It's
as though the engines think the Internet is 20 sites
and you want one of those. And probably you want
to buy stuff.

generally, those are the sites that people want, so they're ranked
higher.

Last week I needed to buy a sheet of lexan polycarbonate.
"buy lexan boston" turns up an online seller, Lowes,
Home Depot, Yelp, Hotfrog, Yellow Pages.... A plastics
store in Boston, where I ended up going, was not on
the first page of results. Yet they have a good,
functional website. And there are only a handful of
shops around boston that handle this stuff. So that
store should have been in the top 3.

why should it have been in the top 3? you're not the only one searching.

if you want to skip stores like lowes, home depot, etc., learn how to
indicate that in your query.

And my results are free of "customization". If you
allow cookies and script then Google will be trying to
guess what you want to see, or perhaps what you're
likely to open your wallet for.

which means it would have given the results you wanted, likely moving
the plastics store closer to the top.

since you blocked that and failed to indicate it in your query, it had
no way of knowing you wanted the smaller stores.

user error.

It also depends on where you are. Just this week
Google agreed, in the EU, to stop trying to shut out
competing shopping services. So in the US it's more
likely that the results will depend on who's paying
Google for a listing. (Even on DDG: eplastics.com
had an ad in my search results and were also near
the top in allegedly non-paid results. Yet I specifically
asked about buying plastic in Boston, not online.)

paid ads are tagged. you can choose to skip those.