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Donald Feury
Donald Feury

Posted on • Updated on • Originally published at blog.feurious.com

How I Completely Automated My YouTube Editing

If you've been watching my videos from the posts I make on here (thank you if you have), I got a dirty little secret...

I haven't done any manual editing on the past three videos.

Now, that doesn't mean there isn't any editing, there is a little but that will grow in time.

No, instead a single ffmpeg command does all the editing for me.

So what exactly is it doing you ask? So far it does the following:

  • Delaying and overlaying a sub animation over the main video (usually just a recording)
  • Adding a fade in effect to the start of the video
  • Adding a fade out effect before the outro
  • Appends the outro to the end of the video

Oh, whats that? You want to see the magic? I got you fam.

Script

#!/usr/bin/env sh

IN=$1
OUT=$2
OVER=$3
OVER_START=$4
OUTRO=$5
DURATION=$(get_vid_duration $IN)
FADE_OUT_DURATION=$6
FADE_IN_DURATION=$7
FADE_OUT_START=$(bc -l <<< "$DURATION - $FADE_OUT_DURATION")
MILLI=${OVER_START}000

ffmpeg -i $IN -i $OUTRO -filter_complex \
    "[0:v]setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[v0];
    movie=$OVER:s=dv+da[overv][overa];
    [overv]setpts=PTS-STARTPTS+$OVER_START/TB[v1];
    [v0][v1]overlay=-600:0:eof_action=pass,fade=t=in:st=0:d=$FADE_IN_DURATION,fade=t=out:st=$FADE_OUT_START:d=$FADE_OUT_DURATION[mainv];
    [overa]adelay=$MILLI|$MILLI,volume=0.5[a1];
    [0:a:0][0:a:1][a1]amix=inputs=3:duration=longest:dropout_transition=0:weights=3 3 1[maina];
    [mainv][maina][1:v][1:a]concat=n=2:v=1:a=1[outv][outa]" \
    -map "[outv]" -map "[outa]" $OUT
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Thats a chunky boy, so let me break down what exactly is happening.

Arguments

IN=$1
OUT=$2
OVER=$3
OVER_START=$4
OUTRO=$5
DURATION=$(get_vid_duration $IN)
FADE_OUT_DURATION=$6
FADE_IN_DURATION=$7
FADE_OUT_START=$(bc -l <<< "$DURATION - $FADE_OUT_DURATION")
MILLI=${OVER_START}000
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These are all the arguments I'm passing into the script to build the ffmpeg command.

  • IN=$1 - this is the path to the main video that I want to use, probably a recording I did earlier in the day.

  • OUT=$2 - this is the path I want to save the final video to.

  • OVER=$3 - this is the file path to the subscription animation I started using. I thought it better to pass this in, since I may change what animation I'm using at some point.

  • OVER_START=$4 - the timestamp, in seconds, to start playing the subscription animation in the main video. Its needed to offset the animation's video frame timestamps and delay the audio.

  • DURATION=$(get_vid_duration $IN) - I'm using another script to get the duration, in seconds, of the main video. Its using ffprobe to grab the metadata in a specific format.

Here is the get_vid_duration script for reference:

#!/usr/bin/env sh

IN=$1

ffprobe -i $IN -show_entries format=duration -v quiet -of csv="p=0"
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  • FADE_OUT_DURATION=$6 - the duration in seconds of the fade out effect. It is also used to calculate the starting time of the fade out effect.

  • FADE_IN_DURATION=$7 - same as last but for the fade in effect.

  • FADE_OUT_START=$(bc -l <<< "$DURATION - $FADE_OUT_DURATION") - uses the duration and fade out duration to calculate the exact second to start the fade out effect. Passed into a terminal calculator program called bc.

  • MILLI=${OVER_START}000 - The milliseconds version of the overlay animation duration. One of the filters I use needs milliseconds instead of seconds.

Filtergraph

"[0:v]setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[v0];
movie=$OVER:s=dv+da[overv][overa];
[overv]setpts=PTS-STARTPTS+$OVER_START/TB[v1];
[v0][v1]overlay=-600:0:eof_action=pass,fade=t=in:st=0:d=$FADE_IN_DURATION,fade=t=out:st=$FADE_OUT_START:d=$FADE_OUT_DURATION[mainv];
[overa]adelay=$MILLI|$MILLI,volume=0.5[a1];
[0:a:0][0:a:1][a1]amix=inputs=3:duration=longest:dropout_transition=0:weights=3 3 1[maina];
[mainv][maina][1:v][1:a]concat=n=2:v=1:a=1[outv][outa]"
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  • [0:v]setpts=PTS-STARTPTS[v0]; - this is making sure that the main video's video stream is starting at the same 00:00:00 timestamp as the animation for proper offsetting. This might not be necessary but I'd rather make sure.

  • movie=$OVER:s=dv+da[overv][overa]; - loading in the sub animation's video and audio stream to be available for use in the rest of the filtergraph.

  • [overv]setpts=PTS-STARTPTS+$OVER_START/TB[v1]; - offset the sub animation's timestamps by the OVER_START argument.

  • [v0][v1]overlay=-600:0:eof_action=pass - overlay the sub animation's video stream over the main video stream with an offset on the x position of -600 (bumps it over to the left).

  • fade=t=in:st=0:d=$FADE_IN_DURATION - adds a fade in effect at the start of the video stream, with duration of FADE_IN_DURATION.

  • fade=t=out:st=$FADE_OUT_START:d=$FADE_OUT_DURATION[mainv]; - adds a fade out effect at the end of the video stream, starting at FADE_OUT_START and lasting FADE_OUT_DURATION.

  • [overa]adelay=$MILLI|$MILLI - adds a delay of MILLI milliseconds to the audio of the sub animation's audio, to sync it up with video stream that was offset.

  • volume=0.5[a1]; - the sub animation's little ding sound is kinda loud, so I cut its volume in half.

  • [0:a:0][0:a:1][a1]amix=inputs=3:duration=longest:dropout_transition=0:weights=3 3 1[maina]; - we mix in both audio streams from the main video, and the audio stream from the sub animation together into one stream. Duration says to set the combined stream's length to the length of the stream with the longest input. Dropout transition and weights are used to offset the increase in volume that occurs when the sub animation sound ends. Its not perfect but it helps.

  • [mainv][maina][1:v][1:a]concat=n=2:v=1:a=1[outv][outa] - finally we take processed video and audio streams, and concat on the end of them, the video and audio streams of the outro passed into script. I just use a blank screen with some music playing for now.

Output

-map "[outv]" -map "[outa]" $OUT
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Finally, we map the fully processed video and audio stream to the output file. This way, ffmpeg will write those streams out to the file, instead of the unprocessed streams straight from the input files.

With that, we have successfully:

  • [x] Overlaid the sub animation, at the desired time, in the main video.
  • [x] Added a fade in effect to the start of the video.
  • [x] Added a fade out effect to the end of the video.
  • [x] Concatenated the outro to the end of the video after the fade out effect.

Things I would like to add:

  • [] Color correction - Hard to do right now since I don't have consistent lighting in my office.
  • [] Better Outro - Something instead of a blank screen with music.
  • [] Get an Intro - Get a decent intro to add to the start of the video.

Top comments (14)

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nombrekeff profile image
Keff

Cool, always like to see some good old automation. Big fan of that.

Have you heard about that dude that automated all his work for 6 years, gaining 95k a year, he even introduced errors to not raise suspicions, and got fired when they found out.

I don't know if it's 100% real, but worth checking it out.

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dak425 profile image
Donald Feury

I have not, do you know the name of this person?

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nombrekeff profile image
Keff

I can't recall the name although his alter ego is FiletOfFish1066 I think

Here is a post about it: interestingengineering.com/program...

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dak425 profile image
Donald Feury

Hah that's cool as hell. Thanks for letting me know

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nombrekeff profile image
Keff

No probs, I myself would have made that dude the fucking boss xD

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dak425 profile image
Donald Feury

Right? I would've asked him what ELSE he could completely automate

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nombrekeff profile image
Keff

Totally, I would have valued him a lot more after that, It would have saved a lot of money to the company... although he lied about it for 6 years.

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dak425 profile image
Donald Feury

I mean, did they ever ask? You can't lie about something if its never brought up

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nombrekeff profile image
Keff

Yup, that's true, I would have not had any problems with it...

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dak425 profile image
Donald Feury

Only reason I say that is, as long as you are getting done what you are suppose to on time, your employer doesn't tend to ask questions.

At least, no where I've worked would ask questions.

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nombrekeff profile image
Keff

That has also been my case, I think they ask more questions when you don't get the stuff done than when you do.

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dak425 profile image
Donald Feury

Exactly

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hugertown profile image
Hugertown • Edited

I also remember struggling with Adobe Premiere and not being able to understand the settings, to remove the background noise from the video and so on. I wanted to do some quick editing, so I found the editor from Movavi play.google.com/store/apps/details... and I am using it now. In general it is very automated, no need to press ten keys to do a simple effect, as it was in Adobe.

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hottunasandwich profile image
Rodrik Vartoomian

Damn, this is cool. Thanks for the full explanation, actually i used this for combining some audio files with adelay that i was struggling with for days :)).
Is there a better way for overlaying audio files?

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