3 first frames are black. Why?

[Honesty]

Hello Friends. i have been using Magic 1.65 version. Works great for vjing.
so ive been producing vids now and noticed that when i export 600x600. 15 sec (for instagram) 60 frames pr sec. The 3 first frames are Black and i have to import the vid into another software and erease the frames there and it that ends up making the file heavyer.
why is this. ? im shure there is a solution for this. can someone point me into a right direction.

MVH Honesty

[Magic]

I assume this is on a Mac? Unfortunately it's how the Mac mp4 encoding works. It delays the audio, so black frames have to be added to the video to compensate (so the audio doesn't get out of sync). For more info you can read Note 2 in this section of the User's Guide: https://magicmusicvisuals.com/downloads ... vieFormats

If you want to get around the problem, you can export as a png sequence instead of an mp4, and then use your own encoder.

[wsobeats]

Hello Eric,

I searched for Instagram and this is the only post. I am doing videos as well that I upload to youtube using Magic and now I want to upload a 58 sec of those to Instagram. I understand using the png sequence option (if that is the solution) but after that I'm lost.

So my question is what is the best way to export files that will work on Instagram? Do I have to change the size ? I tried 640 x 640. The issue on Instagram is that the sides of the video are cut off (only see the center of the video). When I use the 640 x 640 size I get the same issue even just watching the video I created in Magic.

This guy talks about how to get videos to Instagram (less than 60 seconds). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNB6WgqMdGo

btw I am using Macbook as well so I am exporting .mp4 files.

[Magic]

Well, honestly I have never uploaded a video to Instagram, and I am not sure what size is required. If the size has to be 640x640, and you don't want anything to get cut off, you'll just need to scale and translate things in Magic so they all fit within the square. Know what I mean?

[wsobeats]

Yeah .... though that would suck because 11 videos are already done. I'm thinking there is a better solution but I don't know it lol. In this day and age I can't be the first one posting Magic videos to Instagram.

[wsobeats]

Maybe the question is how to transfer a .mp4 file to h.264 ?

[blackdot]

i think the workflow for this should look like this:
- find out what resolution and aspect ratio are recommended for instagram
- create your magic scenes to fit those
- export directly to video in magic or
- export to a png sequence and then convert that with a 3rd party tool (like blender, ffmpeg, premiere, after effects, etc) into a video file, preferrably with h264 codec and a mov or mp4 container if not specified differently by the instagram recommendations

if you dont want to do the second step and use the widescreen vids that you already have, you could do some video editing to make your videos into instagrams format but with two black bars on top an below your vid. or maybe instagram offers options on how it should crop your upload?

cheers

[wsobeats]

Hello,

Thanks for your responses. Ok so I found out some stuff.

Instagram video format : MP4 container and MOV container.

Instagram video codecs: H.264, VP8

Aspect ratio : 1.91:1 for landscape and 4:5 for portrait. And u can always use square.

The question now is how do I control those parameters in Magic?

The SIZE parameter in the export file section refers to pixels? Is that correct? Ok. As I write this I may have figured it out.

I think the max width for Instagram is 1080p. Which is why the sides are getting cut off. Becuase I'm using the default of 1280 x 720.

Still not sure how the aspect ration fits into that equation. Or how I control the resolution. If you can clear that up I should be straight.

Thanks alot. Very helpful.

[blackdot]

https://magicmusicvisuals.com/downloads ... Resolution set the resolution here so the content is produced in this res.

then export in the same resolution.

if instagram says they want 1.91:1 for widescreen and 1080 pixel is the max width, that would mean the height is 1080/1.91=565.45. "1080" is usually the height of full hd though...

regular resolutions like 1920x1080 or 1280x720 are 16:9 or 1.77:1


about the aspect ratio, this just gives you info on what kind of resolution you should use, if it's widesreen or not, e.g. 1280*720 (=1280:720=16:9=1.77:1), or 640*480 (=4:3), or 600*480 (=5:4) and so on.

years ago tv stations sent their stuff in 4:3 or 5:4 and at some point the widescreen format came around and they started switcjing to 16:9. movies are usually an even flatter format than that.


//edit: if instagram still crops your widescreen upload you could just change the magic resolution to sth like 720*720 or 1080*1080 and then scale your scene so everything fits inside and then just export and upload that 1:1 result.