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One pixel movie
Hello everyone,
I have a somewhat peculiar question. I want to create a movie that consists of only one pixel.
I already cropped a video to one pixel but the size of the composition stays 4 X 4 and when it comes to exporting 4 x 4 is always the minimum no matter what format I use.
Is there a possibility to crop a video to one pixel and export it in 1 X 1 pixel with AE or some other program?
I know that you can’t even see one pixel and so on, but it’s for an artistic project, so the rules of logic don’t apply.Thanks in advance.
Marius -
15 Replies
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Hmm… this one might be tricky. How do you actually intend to use the one-pixel movie? Do you have format restrictions on your playback system?
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Walter Soyka] “How do you actually intend to use the one-pixel movie? Do you have format restrictions on your playback system?”
Limiting video to a one-pixel size is one heck of a restriction.
– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.
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I want to play it on a computer on full screen. The upscaling will change the image extremly and I like to explore this effect. I know that it won’t make a big difference if I export it as one pixel or 16 if I scale up afterwards, but the work is a study of the basic constituent of the digital image. Therefor it has to be one pixel.
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One pixel will only be one dot of color though. No variation at all. Just one single color. You can get that same effect by making a 4k image of just a solid in AE.
– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.
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yes I know. But if you scale it up a lot, which would be the case to get a full screen, the solid square gets fractured (it’s hard for me to explain how it looks exactly). Anyway I already tried it with 16 pixels and as I said, I guess there won’t be a big different with 1 pixel. But it’s also a conceptual thing for me, so I really like to export a one pixel movie, no matter what’s the result.
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[Marius Packbier] “I want to play it on a computer on full screen. The upscaling will change the image extremly and I like to explore this effect. I know that it won’t make a big difference if I export it as one pixel or 16 if I scale up afterwards, but the work is a study of the basic constituent of the digital image. Therefor it has to be one pixel.”
Fair enough.
Since 1×1 is a corner case, different scaling algorithms will have drastically different results. It might be more interesting for you to output your 1px movie, reimport it into Ae, scale it there a couple of different ways, then output it at full resolution.
4×4 is the minimum size for an Ae comp and the minimum size for a QuickTime movie.
Do your work in a 4×4 comp, then instead of outputting a movie, output it to a PNG sequence. In the output module, set the bottom and right crops to 3. This will leave you with a 1×1 PNG of the top, left-most pixel for each frame in the comp.
You can re-import it back into Ae for further processing.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Marius Packbier] “Anyway I already tried it with 16 pixels and as I said, I guess there won’t be a big different with 1 pixel.”
Actually, the difference with bilinear scaling is pretty shocking:
The source here is a 27% gray field, at 1×1 on top and 4×4 on the bottom.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
Alternatively, you could work with the video in Photoshop, but I like Walter’s idea better.
– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.
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That’s interesting. I guess there is still a lot to explore. Thanks.
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Great! I will try it out tomorrow. Thanks a lot!
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