I admit it, I’m not keeping up with my screengrabbing duties to make Inventing Situations as fresh as it could be. I’ve got an ever expanding to-do list of over 340 movies and shows bookmarked to grab, a stack of DVDs on my desk, and perhaps most importantly, The Prelinger Archives, is getting ready to unleash 500 freshly digitized shorts onto the web.
So, perhaps it’s time to loosen up the control freak reigns and take on an assistant screengrabber to help make this site the best capping experience it can be.
You wouldn’t have to find the material, just download the movies I point you at and turn them into a bunch of pictures. Your reward would of course be fame and links to your website, if you have one.
The job would work something like this…
- I’d send you a list of urls for movies already digitized online.
- You’d send me back a set of pictures in a zip file, or failing that a list of frame #’s to use as grabs.
- The movies will generally be avi, mpeg1, or mpeg2 files, usually between 200 megs to 1 Gig. You’ll need a set up that lets you move through those formats frame by frame and a connection that makes downloading them practical. I can’t help on the connection, but on the freeze framing, VirtualDub is good (and free) for most of the files I work with.
- Ideally, you’ll actually be able to send me the finished grabs shrunk to 200×150 size. Maybe you have your own means of doing that. If not and you’re trustworthy and technically hearty, I may share the scripts I use for the job, though I’ve been burnt by doing that before. The scripts depend on VirtualDub, ActivePerl and ImageMagick. You’d need to have those (free) tools on your machine, and have some comfort with tinkering with my user-unfriendly scripts.
The audition movie is Assignment: Venezuela, the ‘lost’ mst3k short. Send me a set of grabs (or frame #’s) from it that prove you know the house style, and voila, you’re on. Send questions and applications via this form. (To fight the spammers, you’ll need to wait for a response before you can send me the attachments.)
May 20th, 2008 at 10:45 am
Does VirtualDub automatically capture the frames or do they have to be grabbed one at a time?
May 20th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
VirtualDub can be used to move through files frame by frame. On it’s own, I think it can be made to generate grabs at a fixed interval (eg every 20 seconds, but I usually try to hand pick most of the frames, especially for shorts). The last time I checked, if you use it to shrink those pictures down to 200×150 the file size and image quality are worse than if used other applications to shrink the grabs VD makes. This is why I use those other tools to send a list of hand picked frames to VirtualDub to grab and then do the thumbnailing afterwards.
However, the second grabber doesn’t have to do things exactly like I do, and doesn’t have to be responsible for creating the final images. Just a list of frame numbers would make my life easier if they’re reliably in the frequently violated house style – avoiding truly repetitive grabs, minimizing dull one shots, eliminating buffoon’s ex-wife’s heart and the insanely blurry, and following few other house secrets.
[edited for clarity, 7/23/8]
June 15th, 2008 at 10:15 pm
If only we didn’t have to sleep…
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:43 am
I have some time, I might be interested. Tell me more.
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:32 pm
What more do you want to know? I’m still looking for somebody, since my output of late has dropped to nearly nothing.