Computer screenshot to Video: Results of a simple test/demo

RichMacDonald wrote on 10/16/2003, 10:02 AM
I don't know if anyone is interested, but a few weekends ago I played around with the idea of capturing computer monitor snapshots and transferring them to video with Vegas. The result is at http://www.clevercaboose.com/rich/video/mosaic/mosaic.htm. Its very low rez, so don't expect much :-)

I only gave myself a few hours to experiment and basically, yes I know, the results sucked. Take my word for it that the DV-quality mpg render sucked too. The problems had nothing to do with Vegas, though. Vegas was great, as usual.

The interesting part was using a batch screen capture tool to take a picture of the screen every X seconds. But as the writeup notes, I have yet to find a tool that does this well. I set the screen capture rez to 720x480 pixels to avoid one degradation step. Still, the overall quality was poor. Even if I bought the test tools rather than working with demos, even if I was extra careful and did a better job next time, I don't believe I could get a result I would be happy with. Next time, I'll aim the video camera at the monitor and see if that's any better.

Summary: Fun afternoon, but screen capture isn't good enough for quality work. By quality work, I mean something you could watch on your TV without eye strain and an ongoing game of "spot the flaw".

Comments

planders wrote on 10/16/2003, 11:44 AM
You might want to try again using TechSmith's SnagIt 6 to do the timed capture. I just tested it, and it will actually save each capture to disk rather than hold it in RAM.

You just have to set up the Output properties to use automatic filenames, turn off the preview window, and configure the timer in the Options menu.

It works like a charm, although your resolution issues aren't likely to change. Still, the results might be better if you capture into full-resolution TIFFs or BMPs, then resample the frames in Photoshop (or similar) later. Alternatively, keeping things at full-res will give you more detail to work with when panning and zooming.

Also, don't forget that when rendering to DV, you'll actually want to size the stills to 655x480 instead of 720x480, to get the correct aspect ratio on video. thus, they'll look a bit distorted until you bring them into a DV project.
RichMacDonald wrote on 10/16/2003, 11:46 AM
I'll take a look at SnagIt. Thanks.
johnmeyer wrote on 10/16/2003, 11:48 AM
Satish, the guy that has produced PluginPac and many other great tools for Vegas, also has a capture utility that is designed to help you create demos for software that can be distributed as self-running flash apps. It might be a better tool than what you are using now. Take a look:

Wink Tutorial and Presentation Software

BTW, I thought the results of your work were very good. The part where you zoom in was beyond cool.
planders wrote on 10/16/2003, 12:28 PM
I'll second that--I think you were too hard on yourself by far...
filmy wrote on 10/16/2003, 1:06 PM
I have had good results with a free program called "AVI2BMP". if you haven't used it what is does is loads up an AVI file and lists every single frame in that file. You just select the frame(s) that you want and save them.
stormstereo wrote on 10/17/2003, 4:38 AM
It would be very nice with a step by step tutorial on how you made that mosaic picture and zoomed in on it. Did you just have a high-res scan and blended it with all those smaller pics in Photoshop? Did you import it as a high-res image on the timeline and just zoomed with the pan & crop tool? Or is there a bigger secret behind it all?
Best/Tommy
Grazie wrote on 10/17/2003, 5:05 AM
RMD - I thought the samples were great - and yes there are some techie stuff to improve matters. But on the whole fore me you didn't waste any time last Sunday - You MAY have even given me an excuse to and further this line of thought..... I liked your work! Neato!

Mosaic do facinate me too . . . was well vogue on the middle '80s . . now it has come down to us mere mortals. . . .

Thanks for the "Kick Up the Bottom" to try it out myself,

Grazie
johnmeyer wrote on 10/17/2003, 10:52 AM
It would be very nice with a step by step tutorial on how you made that mosaic picture and zoomed in on it.

I don't know how Rich did it, but I have a program someone gave me many years ago during a consulting project called "Photo Montage" from Arcsoft. It creates exactly the effect used in Rich's demo, namely the ability to take hundreds of photos and use them to substitute for blocks of pixels in an existing photo. It's amazing that someone would take the time to create such a program, package, and sell it (mine is a shrink-wrapped CD-ROM), given the limited nature of the application, but someone did indeed build it. I don't know if the product is still available.
stormstereo wrote on 10/17/2003, 3:24 PM
It's still there JohnMeyer...
http://www.arcsoft.com/en/products/photomontage/