I make youtube videos of some details of sewing machines and most vintage sewing machines. This is my first attempt on a video with some details with a shaft angle placed in video:
As you may see, I got some problems with the quality of the red text and number. The red text got some shadows.
I have made the red text with the counting number from a screen recording of an excel sheet. In the excel, you can make the text red and background green. Then the green color can be used with the Chroma Key filter later in Shotcut. I used the free MS screen recorder called “Screen Recorder Pro”. I have now tried some different settings, and more settings make some shadows on the text graphics. But I found one Video Encoder with good result, and it is Gif. It made relative small video files too. So I think I can recommend to use that unless somebody else may suggest something better.
It takes some editing time to synchronise more video clips, and I use the same camera on repeated sewing machine stitches. By speach I record the position of the handwheel of the sewing machine.
I would love to know if I could do some of this better or easier.
I believe that I had a video that also covered how to create countdowns in shotcut only (The video was not actually to demonstrate on creating countdowns, it was about I resource that I provided on the forum), so You could use just the text : simple filter and type in a command to start a counting. The video is now not on YouTube, because my channel was hacked, but I still have the video, will upload in a day, till then you could use this video from shotcut.
From shotcut
Wait… My Video will come in a day ( or when my PC just finishes the update)
I think such a build in timer on screen solves the video quality issue. In my case I got some add on issues because the number needs to be in sync with the position of the hand wheel of the sewing machine I record. So I had to change the speed of the numbers video up and down more times in shotcut to make it fit with the movement of the machine. Sometimes I stop the move while I explain something. Furthermore the shaft angle go 1.2.3…358.359.0.1.2…
If your usual method of adding a counter is more convenient to you, I think you should continue to use it. But I suggest you use white as a background for the text, instead of green.
That’s truly something hard to do, but you need to deal with it, if I learn C and C++, than I would definitely create a lot of filters, I am also planning for a alternative to Mocha Pro, but I need to learn the vital elements (C and C++), don’t know when they will be developed (or even not), the time is crucial to the results.
If I finish to learn C and C++ in the upcoming years, then I would try to create a filter that makes your work easier.
This is similar to how subtitles work - text appears at certain point in the video for a certain amount of time. I have an app to enable users to create subtitles for videos (in your case each subtitle text would be the number). The new app takes a subtitle file (in subrip - .srt - format) and burns this onto the video. See here for the subtitle generator app: SubRip SRT Subtitles Generator
Actually I think, that the main reason for my limited quality of the text with number in my youtube video is, that the screen recorder used Mp4 x264 AAC encoder with quality level 70%. Several of these encoders made shadows or edge imperfections eventhough the quality level was set to 100%. But the Gif encoder was like perfect. So I guess you will need this Gif encoder possibility for the screen recorder. However it could be some other encoder might be of same quality for this job. But I am going to look for another screen recorder, because i like the mouse pointer to show off better.
MusicalBox, when I look at the “Sh” in the text, I think red part gets darker some places and in both cases of the background. Do you agree? I am not sure what can be the reason.
EDIT: When I look at your start images the white background is quite perfect. But I think the green background got some dark edges between green and red. I do not know why. But this may cause the final result to get lower quality. So in some way these colors are changed in final result. When I look at “250”, I agree, that the white background makes less edge imperfections.
I have tried to play with the quality level of the export encoder, and I think that the youtube version with about 90% quality is quite good as an intermediate video file.
I guess the synchronization problem would be best to solve using about 4 cameras at the same time. But I am not sure that I need to take so many videos like this. So for now I do not like to invest the time in such a set up. Cameras with close up focus may not be that cheap either, but I have not studied it.
I noticed some problems with the MS Screen Recorder Pro. One is, that you can only use curser on the whole screen or windows and not on a selected rectangle. One other problem I got is, that my PC screen is old and got 1920 x 1200 pixels. But my vertical videos got 1280 pixels in height. So I cannot screen record something that fit the 1280 height.
I don’t know either why there’s this border incompatibility between green and red.
In the demonstration bellow, we see that as soon as all red is removed form the circle, the dark border disappears. And it comes back when some red is introduced back in the circle.
I just now got about half through Kevins nice video on OBS, and then I seem to discover, that my newly beloved Gif encoder is not part of the encoders to select. Can this be true?
Not sure why you need Gif, but deep in the settings you can select gif.
I’ve not ventured into the FFMPEG settings.
OBS I feel is highly advanced for recording for the pricetag of Free.
OBS has a very active support forum for questions. Like with Shotcut, there is no actual safety net when changing settings, as you can alter settings that make a video bad. You won’t get any pop up warning you made any wrong settings.
This is a screen shot of a video shown from a mp4 x264 AAC 70pct recorded video of an excel sheet:
And this is the same from when a gif encoder was used:
I guess you can see the quality difference.
I have tried to enlarge the graphics I see from the excel-window to 300 % and then you see these dark edges too. So I can confirm the findings here from MusicalBox on the Excel graphics:
I made a red green border test with the old MS paint graphics tool with a green background and a circle and some text in red. Then I zoom the view 400% and took a PNG screen shot. It is presented here. You need to see this png file on your screen in perfect resolution 100% so your programs don’t introduce border failures. Well then you see that the text got black areas on borders but the circle do not. So I guess the internal graphics calculations to produce text makes some issues:
I have now tried to test a black background, and it may be better to use that. I present results below. With a red green border, you turn on red and switch off green at border or the other way around. With white background, you switch on and off both the green and the blue colors on border and let red be the same. With the black background, you switch on or off red only.
The process is, that I make the changing text graphics by excel. Then I use the MS Screen Recorder Pro to record the graphics with two different encoders. Finally I make screen shots converted to png of the presented video on my screen, and these png-files are uploaded here below.
This is with the Mp4 x264 AAC 70pct encoder and white background:
This is with the Mp4 x264 AAC 70pct encoder and black background:
This is with the Gif encoder and white background:
This is with the Gif encoder and black background:
I think the x264 AAC encoder introduce some black on the borders between red and white. I have tried to enlarge the png-file from there, so you can see it better:
