Anatomy Of A Picspam
Jun. 20th, 2007 12:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
raloriaI wanted to get this post made before this week's SPN Picspams and now seemed as good a time as any. I must admit, once I got this idea (and several of you agreed you wanted to see it) I wasn't entirely sure how I was going to cover the whole process. But it's sort of fallen into place and now it's like opening night.
My hope is that you find this interesting and informative as to how I put my screencap picspams together every week.
Last Thursday's SPN Picspam of The Usual Suspects is the main focus here, as I documented certain aspects of it as I went along. Just a warning that this post is very image heavy and not dialup friendly. Sorry. In order to properly show parts of the capping process I need to include full-sized images. There's also a short video clip.
*** The usual rules still apply to the caps contained in this post. If you want to take any of them to use, you may. All I ask is for a credit. ***
We begin with capping the episode. Btw, all the software I use is freeware and completely spyware & malware free. I have recently found the GOM Player, which makes very nice caps, but I'm still experimenting with it. For capping TUS, I used the AVS DVD Player which I've used for most of my screencapping. It's a big media player which has lots of controls, but also uses quite a bit of memory and resources. It's freeware that gives you full control over the video and it plays practically every type of video file including DVDs. As an alternative to AVS there is Media Player Classic. I still use it to make some of my caps, such as for DA, once in a while. The frame by frame controls are very limited (you can only go forward), but it still gets the job done.
The main contols used for capping with AVS are the Y key (frame by frame backwards) and the U key (frame by frame forwards). The space bar will play or pause the video and you use the F7 key to save each paused frame of video as a screencapture. With AVS you can save them as either jpegs or bitmaps. I prefer bitmaps because very little data is lost, resulting in a much higher quality image to work with later on.
Here's a video I made as I screencapped part of TUS. The quality isn't that great as it was made with my old digital camera, but it will hopefully show you how I choose what to cap and how I make them. And yes, that's my voice doing the "commentary". *cringes*
Each and every one of my caps is chosen by hand. I'd like to emphasize that only because some software will allow you to set it up so it takes screencaps every few frames or seconds. I don't believe in having software blindly choose my caps for me. I like to have more control over my screencapping. Just my opinion.
I cap pretty extensively. Later on I'll sort through all the caps and delete the bad ones. The most difficult scenes to cap are fight scenes because of all the movement and dark scenes because it's hard to see what you're capping. I always like my caps to be as sharp as possible and I never include any text from the opening credits in my caps. When a scene is very dark (quite common on SPN!) and I know that the scene has some action that will make good caps, I'll go through and make a cap every 2 to 3 frames. Later on, during the sorting process, most of these will be deleted, but the good ones will remain. Another difficult situation to cap is when the brothers are walking side by side towards the camera. Because of the height difference between Jared & Jensen, they walk at different speeds. This means even though they're walking together, they're rarely in focus at the same time in these situations. Makes for quite a screencapping challenge, but I usually get a few where they're both nearly in focus together.
The capping of TUS by the numbers:
Hours spent capping the episode: 5 to 6
Number of caps in the original count: 1,163 (906mb)
Final cap count after sorting: 1,018 (793mb)
Once the caps are made and saved into a folder it's time to sort out the bad ones for deletion. I use the same software for sorting as I use to fix up the caps - IrfanView. I could easily use some other photo viewing and editing software - I have The Gimp and Adobe Photoshop Elements. However, these are once again more resource hungry than Irfanview. Irfanview also has a few features that have advantages over the offerings of the other software. We'll get to those shortly.
With IrfanView I can scroll through the caps in their folder just by rolling my mouse wheel. Irfanview also comes with a handy delete button that will move the image to your Recycle Bin. I examine each cap and if it's not up to my standards (out of focus, ugly, not what I was after) I dump it. Sometimes I end up sorting through the caps several times before I narrow it down to the very best images.
Once I have a final cap count I can begin fixing the images in IrfanView. All screencaps need adjustments to their size, contrast, brightness, saturation, and sharpness. Caps made from downloaded avi's are especially dark and devoid of color. Ones made from DVDs are usually in better condition, but are still tweaked to make them look their very best.
Since the various scenes of an episode use different lighting and show people with different skin tones, it's often a challenge to find one set of settings that will work for every cap. I begin the process by going through the caps and trying out different settings on certain caps until I find that one set which seems to improve all the caps properly. I usually try out caps in dark scenes, indoors, outdoors, closeups, and even just between Jared & Jensen themselves. Jared has a darker skin tone than Jensen so I often have to watch that I don't get too much color in his face. Then there's the dance you do with bringing up the brightness of the caps without showing the pixels from the video to much. This is only a problem with the downloaded avi files. A lot of times I have to keep the scenes sort of dark in order to hide the pixelation. The trick is to bring up the contrast with the gamma in order to balance everything out as much as possible without showing too many of the pixels. With most of the caps, I double their size and can do it without losing too much quality.
The next section will illustrate how I fix the screencaps in IrfanView. I've used one of my favorite caps of Dean in TUS as the example.
Here's the original cap as it looks in Irfanview. For the sake of keeping these images at a reasonable size I'm showing this cap through these stages in it's original 608 x 336 size.
The next step is to increase the Contrast and the Gamma.
We all know how little color there is in the episodes. I like to improve that in my screencaps. The caps from downloaded avi files are especially under-saturated. By increasing the color saturation we get this result.
The final step is to sharpen the image, giving us a much better looking cap than what we started with.
For a long time, I fixed all the caps just like this - one cap at a time. It would take me hours! Then in trying out different things with IrfanView I found a wonderful feature, Batch Conversion. This one feature alone has since saved me a great deal of time in the capping process. There are two main dialog boxes for Batch Conversion. I won't go into all the details, but you basically select which images you want to work with and add them to the Input Files list, sort them, designate an output folder for them to go into, and then select what format you want the new images to be in. Under the "Set Advanced Options" dialog box you can put in the settings to adjust the size, color, contrast, etc. for each image.
The main dialog box for Batch Conversion in IrfanView...
Once you have all your settings in place you click on Start and within a few seconds or a couple of minutes (depending on how many images are being converted) the caps have all been fixed!
I use a small notebook to keep track of all the settings I use in IrfanView for each episode. This not only gives me a starting point as far as the control settings go, but it's also a backup in case I ever need to re-fix the original caps for some reason. Sometimes I don't have time to cap an entire episode before I need to post the picspam to my LJ so this also gives me the settings I used for when I finish capping that particular episode.
Just to show you how drastic the difference can be between the original caps and the finished, improved versions, here are some examples from TUS...
BEFORE
AFTER
BEFORE
AFTER
BEFORE
AFTER
BEFORE
AFTER
BEFORE
AFTER
And here's a couple of Before & After examples from Something Wicked to show you the difference in an episode capped from DVD...
BEFORE
AFTER
BEFORE
AFTER
Once the caps are fixed it's time to choose just the best ones to include in my weekly picspams. I usually choose from the first scene or scenes involving the brothers. I print out contact sheets of the caps up for consideration and then make my final selection, marking the ones I'll upload to my Photobucket account.
One of the contact sheets for TUS:
The remaining parts of the process are relatively simple. I upload the caps into Photobucket, type out my journal entry with the coded caps, and try to add interesting comments into the mix. As a final touch, I always like to use a quote from the scene(s) I've capped as the text in the LJ cut. I generally can find the quote I'm looking for at Supernatural WikiQuote, but every now and then I have to watch that particular scene myself to find one that stands out.
I don't really know the overall time I spend on each picspam, but I imagine the whole process from beginning to end probably takes 1 or 2 days on average. If I manage to take the time to cap the entire episode all at once it most likely stretches to 3 days. But I swear, putting together this one post took longer than the picspams themselves usually do! LOL!
So there you have it! My whole screencapping process from the first cap to the finished picpsam. Hopefully this answered some of your questions. If you still want to know something I didn't cover, just ask it in the comments and I'll do what I can to provide an answer.
~ Raloria
aka Valerie or Val
My hope is that you find this interesting and informative as to how I put my screencap picspams together every week.
Last Thursday's SPN Picspam of The Usual Suspects is the main focus here, as I documented certain aspects of it as I went along. Just a warning that this post is very image heavy and not dialup friendly. Sorry. In order to properly show parts of the capping process I need to include full-sized images. There's also a short video clip.
*** The usual rules still apply to the caps contained in this post. If you want to take any of them to use, you may. All I ask is for a credit. ***
We begin with capping the episode. Btw, all the software I use is freeware and completely spyware & malware free. I have recently found the GOM Player, which makes very nice caps, but I'm still experimenting with it. For capping TUS, I used the AVS DVD Player which I've used for most of my screencapping. It's a big media player which has lots of controls, but also uses quite a bit of memory and resources. It's freeware that gives you full control over the video and it plays practically every type of video file including DVDs. As an alternative to AVS there is Media Player Classic. I still use it to make some of my caps, such as for DA, once in a while. The frame by frame controls are very limited (you can only go forward), but it still gets the job done.
The main contols used for capping with AVS are the Y key (frame by frame backwards) and the U key (frame by frame forwards). The space bar will play or pause the video and you use the F7 key to save each paused frame of video as a screencapture. With AVS you can save them as either jpegs or bitmaps. I prefer bitmaps because very little data is lost, resulting in a much higher quality image to work with later on.
Here's a video I made as I screencapped part of TUS. The quality isn't that great as it was made with my old digital camera, but it will hopefully show you how I choose what to cap and how I make them. And yes, that's my voice doing the "commentary". *cringes*
Each and every one of my caps is chosen by hand. I'd like to emphasize that only because some software will allow you to set it up so it takes screencaps every few frames or seconds. I don't believe in having software blindly choose my caps for me. I like to have more control over my screencapping. Just my opinion.
I cap pretty extensively. Later on I'll sort through all the caps and delete the bad ones. The most difficult scenes to cap are fight scenes because of all the movement and dark scenes because it's hard to see what you're capping. I always like my caps to be as sharp as possible and I never include any text from the opening credits in my caps. When a scene is very dark (quite common on SPN!) and I know that the scene has some action that will make good caps, I'll go through and make a cap every 2 to 3 frames. Later on, during the sorting process, most of these will be deleted, but the good ones will remain. Another difficult situation to cap is when the brothers are walking side by side towards the camera. Because of the height difference between Jared & Jensen, they walk at different speeds. This means even though they're walking together, they're rarely in focus at the same time in these situations. Makes for quite a screencapping challenge, but I usually get a few where they're both nearly in focus together.
The capping of TUS by the numbers:
Hours spent capping the episode: 5 to 6
Number of caps in the original count: 1,163 (906mb)
Final cap count after sorting: 1,018 (793mb)
Once the caps are made and saved into a folder it's time to sort out the bad ones for deletion. I use the same software for sorting as I use to fix up the caps - IrfanView. I could easily use some other photo viewing and editing software - I have The Gimp and Adobe Photoshop Elements. However, these are once again more resource hungry than Irfanview. Irfanview also has a few features that have advantages over the offerings of the other software. We'll get to those shortly.
With IrfanView I can scroll through the caps in their folder just by rolling my mouse wheel. Irfanview also comes with a handy delete button that will move the image to your Recycle Bin. I examine each cap and if it's not up to my standards (out of focus, ugly, not what I was after) I dump it. Sometimes I end up sorting through the caps several times before I narrow it down to the very best images.
Once I have a final cap count I can begin fixing the images in IrfanView. All screencaps need adjustments to their size, contrast, brightness, saturation, and sharpness. Caps made from downloaded avi's are especially dark and devoid of color. Ones made from DVDs are usually in better condition, but are still tweaked to make them look their very best.
Since the various scenes of an episode use different lighting and show people with different skin tones, it's often a challenge to find one set of settings that will work for every cap. I begin the process by going through the caps and trying out different settings on certain caps until I find that one set which seems to improve all the caps properly. I usually try out caps in dark scenes, indoors, outdoors, closeups, and even just between Jared & Jensen themselves. Jared has a darker skin tone than Jensen so I often have to watch that I don't get too much color in his face. Then there's the dance you do with bringing up the brightness of the caps without showing the pixels from the video to much. This is only a problem with the downloaded avi files. A lot of times I have to keep the scenes sort of dark in order to hide the pixelation. The trick is to bring up the contrast with the gamma in order to balance everything out as much as possible without showing too many of the pixels. With most of the caps, I double their size and can do it without losing too much quality.
The next section will illustrate how I fix the screencaps in IrfanView. I've used one of my favorite caps of Dean in TUS as the example.
Here's the original cap as it looks in Irfanview. For the sake of keeping these images at a reasonable size I'm showing this cap through these stages in it's original 608 x 336 size.
The next step is to increase the Contrast and the Gamma.
We all know how little color there is in the episodes. I like to improve that in my screencaps. The caps from downloaded avi files are especially under-saturated. By increasing the color saturation we get this result.
The final step is to sharpen the image, giving us a much better looking cap than what we started with.
For a long time, I fixed all the caps just like this - one cap at a time. It would take me hours! Then in trying out different things with IrfanView I found a wonderful feature, Batch Conversion. This one feature alone has since saved me a great deal of time in the capping process. There are two main dialog boxes for Batch Conversion. I won't go into all the details, but you basically select which images you want to work with and add them to the Input Files list, sort them, designate an output folder for them to go into, and then select what format you want the new images to be in. Under the "Set Advanced Options" dialog box you can put in the settings to adjust the size, color, contrast, etc. for each image.
The main dialog box for Batch Conversion in IrfanView...
Once you have all your settings in place you click on Start and within a few seconds or a couple of minutes (depending on how many images are being converted) the caps have all been fixed!
I use a small notebook to keep track of all the settings I use in IrfanView for each episode. This not only gives me a starting point as far as the control settings go, but it's also a backup in case I ever need to re-fix the original caps for some reason. Sometimes I don't have time to cap an entire episode before I need to post the picspam to my LJ so this also gives me the settings I used for when I finish capping that particular episode.
Just to show you how drastic the difference can be between the original caps and the finished, improved versions, here are some examples from TUS...
BEFORE
AFTER
BEFORE
AFTER
BEFORE
AFTER
BEFORE
AFTER
BEFORE
AFTER
And here's a couple of Before & After examples from Something Wicked to show you the difference in an episode capped from DVD...
BEFORE
AFTER
BEFORE
AFTER
Once the caps are fixed it's time to choose just the best ones to include in my weekly picspams. I usually choose from the first scene or scenes involving the brothers. I print out contact sheets of the caps up for consideration and then make my final selection, marking the ones I'll upload to my Photobucket account.
One of the contact sheets for TUS:
The remaining parts of the process are relatively simple. I upload the caps into Photobucket, type out my journal entry with the coded caps, and try to add interesting comments into the mix. As a final touch, I always like to use a quote from the scene(s) I've capped as the text in the LJ cut. I generally can find the quote I'm looking for at Supernatural WikiQuote, but every now and then I have to watch that particular scene myself to find one that stands out.
I don't really know the overall time I spend on each picspam, but I imagine the whole process from beginning to end probably takes 1 or 2 days on average. If I manage to take the time to cap the entire episode all at once it most likely stretches to 3 days. But I swear, putting together this one post took longer than the picspams themselves usually do! LOL!
So there you have it! My whole screencapping process from the first cap to the finished picpsam. Hopefully this answered some of your questions. If you still want to know something I didn't cover, just ask it in the comments and I'll do what I can to provide an answer.
~ Raloria
aka Valerie or Val
