Need help shooting or using a web home page in a show.

[David Wegley]

I think that Ambrosia’s SnapsProX would let you record the website in a Quicktime video and then you could use any number of programs to place it in the video.

[Jeremy Garchow]

Why don’t you shoot the guy on green and then composite the over the shoulder screen later?

[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

The over-the-shoulder shot should look just fine if you use an LCD computer display.

Then cut “full-frame” to either stills captured using “Grab” on a Mac (or other screen-still image capture), or a motion capture app like the one suggested.

[Dan Riley]

To clarify;

Yes, shooting an LCD, over the shoulder from a 4 or 5 feet away looks great.
(it’s a Dell 20 inch). That part is fine. Also being able to place video in that
screen in post is also something I know how to do. But if you shoot that LCD
from a few inches, and you move around on it, you get terrible pixilations
and moire to beat the band. It is horrible video.

And a still of the web page is not what I want. I want to move around
on the page with the camera, or simulate that.

The first suggestion, about using Ambrosia’s SnapsProX, I will look into it.

And the one about shooting green screen,
the over the shoulder shot, with the LCD in it, is perfectly fine.
I would have to put the web video in the created background the same as
putting it in the actual shot, so I don’t gain anything shooting green.

Finally, I’m not moving the over the shoulder shot or trying to track the
key in the LCD monitor with any kind of camera move. I’ll cut to the web
video full screen to do the moves around the web page.

Any additional ideas are welcome.
I see this effect on shows and spots all the time and have never tried to do it myself.
I think many times it was shot with film, but I don’t see any reason why
I can’t make it look as good with video.

Dan

[Thaxter Clavemarlton]

You need a high-rez image of the page(s) of the site.

Grabbing a freeze FROM the site will only be 72 dpi (approx. 640 x 480), and zooming and panning on theta freeze will look very pixelated and low quality.

Your best hope is to re-create the “look” of the site in an image program at, say, double to triple the pixel dimensions. Then you can zoom and move it very well.

[Tom Brooks]

If you grab a typical web page with Grab, you’ll be able to zoom in about 30-50% in SD video. CLoser than that, you’ll probably have to recreate it in a larger pixel dimension so that you can zoom way in on the details. After Effects would do a good job on the moves.

Final Cut Studio, FCP 5.1.2, After Effects 6.5 Pro, Quicktime 7.1.3, G5 Quad 2.5, Kona-LHe V3, 4.5GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 7800-GT, G-RAID 2x1TB FW800.

[Bill Kelly]

I’d have to disagree somewhat with the above post. I just completed a show where we used captures of the interviewees web sites at the end of their segment to promote their businesses. The web sites look great in HD and SD. The pictures on it are clear and sharp, and the text is very readable and not pixelated. Put your monitor on its maximum available viewing resolution so you capture as much of the page as possible.

Try doing a screen capture of the web site, take it into Photoshop and enlarge it 200-300% using bicubic. When you bring it into your timeline, put a deinterlace filter on it. By having enlarged it, you can set keyframes to tilt up or down and pan left or right on it, as well as do a slow zoom in or push back.

We took screen caps of a number of pages on the different web sites, used keyframing, and dissolved between them. The results came out looking very, very good.

[Bill Kelly]

Actually in my above post, I was referring to the post two posts above. Sorry for the confusion.

[Dan Riley]

From various people’s ideas above I tried this:
Using the Ambrosia’s SnapsProX, and was doing what you said about the largest size my
computer monitor would show, (my test was at 1400 by 900 or so, on my Macbook Pro)
I recorded a sequence to a quicktime movie, imported into FCP,
and then I enlarged it with the motion tab, put a flicker filter on it, moved it around
with key frames, and it looks very good. I’m sure Kel, I could get it to look better
with some of your ideas about Photoshop etc. But bottom line is,
using Ambrosia’s SnapsProX I can move my mouse around on the picture if I want
and do moves around the web page with FCP or some over app, and then put the whole thing
into the blank screen on my over the shoulder shot, using the BCC DVE or some other plugin
and dissolve to it full screen too at the end. If I only wanted to use a still, then GRAB on a very large
computer monitor screen would also work probably. I just needed to get pixel level up from the
SD level to 3 or 4 times that, then I can enlarge it and move it around.

This will work now. This is completely different from trying to get something by
shooting the computer monitor screen.

Thanks for the help.
Dan

[Tom Brooks]

Sounds like you’ve taken it to the next level very nicely.