Need help creating simulated PC desktop

[David W. Richardson]

I need to create a simulated PC desktop for my current feature 'Tangled Web'. I can't use an actual Windows desktop for obvious reasons having to do with licensing and copyrights.

I had hoped I could use a screenshot made with the PrintScreen key (using a custom 'skin' for the desktop), pasting it into PhotoShop. Sadly, when I pull that into Premiere 6.0 (no AfterEffects), the results onscreen are very low resolution -- icons are fuzzy and text is almost unreadable. Understandable, I suppose.

So now I'm trying to create something from scratch. I have a couple of things stacked against me. First, I only have PhotoShop 6.0 -- nothing else. Second, I am a total novice with PS and graphic design in general.

Again, I'm having problems with resolution. I've created the project at 300dpi, 720x480. But if I put any text on it at all -- text small enough to simulate icon text on a desktop -- it still comes out distinctly UN-sharp when pulled into Premiere and viewed on a TV screen. So do most of the other elements I try to create. I've tried using sharpen, but that doesn't seem to improve things without making it look completely unrealistic as a PC desktop.

This simulated desktop graphic has to be full-screen and is a critical element of the movie. I can't just work around it.

If I had the money, I'd hire a pro to do this for me -- but all I can offer is deferred pay, and nobody seems to want to undertake the project on that basis. (Again, understandable.)

Soooo......can anybody tell me how to accomplish what I need to do here?

Thanks in advance!

[David W. Richardson]

Anybody? Still needing help here.

Thanks!

[12quidkidinnit]

I did something similar for a recent film, with fairly good results. I think the 3rd attempt was the best.
I was trying to create a simulation of some search software, where someone was typing in a password followed by a person's name. Then the results came up on the screen. I also had to make it appear that someone was reading a text document on a computer. Part of this was shown directly, with some of it being keyed in to display on a computer screen in an office.
At the time, I was very dubious about how clear or otherwise it would look when played from a DVD onto a TV, but it actually works very well.

I used Coreldraw for the still images. The way I did it was to start at the end and work back. So I made a search page with all the text boxes filled in. Then copied the image before deleting one letter, then copying again, deleting the next letter, etc, until I had a blank search page again. I put all the images on a timeline in Premiere and exported it. Next I imported the video sequence and speeded it up so it looked realistic. As you'll see if you watch the video clip, some of the colours look better than others. The green and red aren't so good.

I tried putting it on youtube but it was taking ages, so it's on Divxvine.com

http://divxvine.com/do7so6fquvcs/animated_seq_wmv_NEW.avi.html

[David W. Richardson]

Thanks 12quid. It still looks a little fuzzy. And, of course, the text is MUCH larger than what would be on desktop icons.

Still, what settings did you use in CorelDraw to create this? DPI? RGB of CMYK? 720x480? Any tips? What seemed to work better? What didn't work so well?

I appreciate the help!

David

[MikeGunter]

Hi,

What is the resolution of the project? If you are using a standard definition project at .9 PAR, then the 720x480 would need a 640x480 VGA image - and that image would have to have a reduced color set for NTSC colors space of 16-235 for IRE broadcast limits.

How to do that is to set your VGA monitor to (single screen) to 640x480 thousands of colors, with a custom image wallpaper and do a screen capture.

Reduce the color levels in Photoshop or similar. Any NLE should adjust the PAR to .9 for you automatically.

DPI, RGB, CMYK, etc., shouldn't be any concern, assuming you limit RGB to 16-235 in the levels, dimensions to 640x480.

Remember, VGA is progressive, video is interlaced. Thin lines will pulsate or twinkle, so try to avoid them in your design in so much as you can.

[EDIT-XTREEM]

I think that basing it off what 12quidkidinnit did, plus doing some keyboard shots, and maybe motion tracking the image onto the screen.

[egproductions]

adobe captivate will allow you to record your desktop movements into a video but you will have to make your desktop look different if you don't want it to look like windows.

[Tom Marshall]

I would say the easiest way to simulate a desktop is to actually have one that works. Check out bblean. It's a Windows Explorer shell replacement that looks a lot like a Linux / UNIX desktop. It's somewhat of a clone of Afterstep for Windows. And it works really well too...

[GageFX]

I would also recommend Object Desktop (http://www.stardock.com/products/odnt/) and WindowBlinds (http://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/) by Stardock (http://www.stardock.com/).

It can be easily used to download, apply, and customize various looks to make the OS look as basic or as futuristic as you need.

http://skins7.wincustomize.com/PBourne/wb/MS-DOS.jpg

http://www.draginol.com/images/ObjectDesktop2008InfoGuide_DA61/clip_image0363.jpg

Or even make it look just like Mac OSX or anything else.

http://img161.imageshack.us/img161/8699/4881op4.th.jpg (http://img161.imageshack.us/my.php?image=4881op4.jpg)




Hope that helps.

[David W. Richardson]

Sorry to be so long responding to this. I thought the thread was dead.

Okay, Adobe Captivate is great and all for doing screen presentations you run on your PC. But I have yet to find any screen capture software that gives me a high quality resolution for pulling into my NLE and porting out to a DVD to be shown on a TV. Everything I've tried, the resolution is just fuzzy and crappy.

I do have WindowBlinds and can make great looking PC desktops with it, but again -- the problem is getting that image into my NLE (Adobe Premiere). If I just do a PrintScreen, paste it into PhotoShop and save, then open the resulting still in Premiere, the image is way too fuzzy -- most likely due to the fact that screen captures at 72dpi. So the problem isn't creating a decent looking desktop -- it's getting that image into my NLE so it displays on the TV as a crisp, sharp image. That's where I'm having trouble.

Any suggestions???

[GageFX]

What you describe from the screen print make little sense. When I printscreen, I get perfectly clear images of my screen. The "72dpi" means nothing unless you are printing something. it has nothing to do with the resolution and clarity of the image onscreen. "72dpi" when embedded in an image is only a metadata reference to what size that image will natively print at. Also, the "72dpi" screen resolution is now a fallacy and dates back to the original Macs. I have a 22" CRT display set to 2560x1600 - that equates to approximately 134dpi.

So set that aside. Here is a screencap of my laptop as I see it right now. It is just as crystal clear as the screen itself. Your problem has nothing to do with "72dpi" and the is nothing inherently wrong with screencaps. There must be a problem with what you are doing with it. For mine, I simple hit screencap which copied the screen to the clipboard, opened Photoshop, hit CTRL-N to create a new doc, hit CTRL-V to paste the screencap, then saved as a Lev10 JPEG. You can, of course, save as a PSD and import that straight into Premiere.

My laptop screen resolution is relatively low - max. 1280x800 - but that is still more than enough for SD or 720 HD. I would screencap from my desktop if I needed higher res.

http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/8438/screencapgl9.th.jpg (http://img514.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screencapgl9.jpg)

[Tom Marshall]

I do have WindowBlinds and can make great looking PC desktops with it, but again -- the problem is getting that image into my NLE (Adobe Premiere). If I just do a PrintScreen, paste it into PhotoShop and save, then open the resulting still in Premiere, the image is way too fuzzy -- most likely due to the fact that screen captures at 72dpi. So the problem isn't creating a decent looking desktop -- it's getting that image into my NLE so it displays on the TV as a crisp, sharp image. That's where I'm having trouble.

Any suggestions???

Then you're doing something wrong. How many times are you resizing the image? Are you resizing it in Photoshop and then changing the perspective with a "corner pin" in Premiere?

Doing a "corner pin" on a small image will give you some fuzzy results.

[metro2307]

I could probably do this in After Effects if I had a sample clip and pics of what you want it to look like. Just a thought....

[MiniMan13]

Heh, why go threw all the work - just installed a Free Linux OS?
www.opensuse.com
www.ubuntu.com
http://fedoraproject.org/

[GageFX]

Install Linux to composite in a fake computer screen.

Really?

Really, REALLY?

http://www.buddy-icons.info/content/smileys/yahoo_ooooh.gif

[Tom Marshall]

lol.

Speaking of Linux, you could go to one of the theme sites like a KDE theme site - http://www.kde-look.org/ - and just use one of those if you're not too worried about what's actually on the screen. The upside is the grabs tend to look pretty hi-tech.

[MiniMan13]

Install Linux to composite in a fake computer screen.

Really?

Really, REALLY?

http://www.buddy-icons.info/content/smileys/yahoo_ooooh.gif
Yea really?

[Tom Marshall]

Just use this:

http://feedelite.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/bsod.jpg

[seunosewa]

Use a lower resolution; that's the answer. Resize your desktop to 640x480 or 800x600 and change your theme so the fonts are slightly bigger, and it will look fine at DVD resolution. See what we mean?

[GageFX]

Yea really?

Are you asking me?

[David W. Richardson]

What you describe from the screen print make little sense. When I printscreen, I get perfectly clear images of my screen. The "72dpi" means nothing unless you are printing something. it has nothing to do with the resolution and clarity of the image onscreen. "72dpi" when embedded in an image is only a metadata reference to what size that image will natively print at. Also, the "72dpi" screen resolution is now a fallacy and dates back to the original Macs. I have a 22" CRT display set to 2560x1600 - that equates to approximately 134dpi.

So set that aside. Here is a screencap of my laptop as I see it right now. It is just as crystal clear as the screen itself. Your problem has nothing to do with "72dpi" and the is nothing inherently wrong with screencaps. There must be a problem with what you are doing with it. For mine, I simple hit screencap which copied the screen to the clipboard, opened Photoshop, hit CTRL-N to create a new doc, hit CTRL-V to paste the screencap, then saved as a Lev10 JPEG. You can, of course, save as a PSD and import that straight into Premiere.

My laptop screen resolution is relatively low - max. 1280x800 - but that is still more than enough for SD or 720 HD. I would screencap from my desktop if I needed higher res.

http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/8438/screencapgl9.th.jpg (http://img514.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screencapgl9.jpg)

Yes, your cap looks fine -- on the computer screen. How it looks pulled into a video, burned to a DVD, and played on a TV screen is what matters, though.

My screen caps look just fine on my computer screen. It's trying to get them to look good in my movies that's causing problems.

[David W. Richardson]

Use a lower resolution; that's the answer. Resize your desktop to 640x480 or 800x600 and change your theme so the fonts are slightly bigger, and it will look fine at DVD resolution. See what we mean?

Let me give that a try. Be right back...

[David W. Richardson]

Then you're doing something wrong. How many times are you resizing the image? Are you resizing it in Photoshop and then changing the perspective with a "corner pin" in Premiere?

Doing a "corner pin" on a small image will give you some fuzzy results.


I'm not resizing it at all. I'm a PhotoShop neophyte. I'm just pasting, saving, and pulling it into Premiere.

Don't even know what a 'corner pin' is. :undecided

[Tom Marshall]

A corner pin is where you take each corner of the image and set it at different points. So, for example, a computer screen would be at a 10% angle from the camera, the corners of the screen wouldn't create a perfect rectangle since each corner would be in different locations. Your corner pin would be matching up the corners of the overlay to the corners of the monitor.

[David W. Richardson]

A corner pin is where you take each corner of the image and set it at different points. So, for example, a computer screen would be at a 10% angle from the camera, the corners of the screen wouldn't create a perfect rectangle since each corner would be in different locations. Your corner pin would be matching up the corners of the overlay to the corners of the monitor.

Gotcha. Not doing anything like that.

Okay, the lowest resolution on the PC I'm using is 800x600. I set it to that with 'large' font size, did a screen cap, pasted into PhotoShop (800x600 project size, 72dpi), and saved in 3 formats -- BMP, TIFF and PSD. (Premiere 6.0 won't import JPEGs.)

Pulled all 3 files into a new Premiere project. The TIFF looks worse than the others. The BMP looks best, but it's still fuzzy and flickery. If I use flicker reduction, that makes the image even more fuzzy.

I may have another computer that will do 640x480 that I could try. But based on these results, I'm not encouraged.

[jeremytuttle]

Is it possible that when you bring your screen cap in your NLE is automatically shrinking it to fit your frame. This may also mess with the aspect ratio, that would distort things for sure.

If this is the problem you may want "zoom" in or perhaps you need to set your image import to have the image come in at it's correct size. Now it will of course be too big for your frame, but if you move it around to the spot you want... or even apply a motion path to it so it could either look like a closeup of the screen or a closeup and pan/tilt of the screen.

[jeremytuttle]

Gotcha. Not doing anything like that.

Okay, the lowest resolution on the PC I'm using is 800x600. I set it to that with 'large' font size, did a screen cap, pasted into PhotoShop (800x600 project size, 72dpi), and saved in 3 formats -- BMP, TIFF and PSD. (Premiere 6.0 won't import JPEGs.)

Pulled all 3 files into a new Premiere project. The TIFF looks worse than the others. The BMP looks best, but it's still fuzzy and flickery. If I use flicker reduction, that makes the image even more fuzzy.

I may have another computer that will do 640x480 that I could try. But based on these results, I'm not encouraged.

Can you do a screen shot of your preview window, so we can see what's going on?

[David W. Richardson]

Is it possible that when you bring your screen cap in your NLE is automatically shrinking it to fit your frame. This may also mess with the aspect ratio, that would distort things for sure.

If this is the problem you may want "zoom" in or perhaps you need to set your image import to have the image come in at it's correct size. Now it will of course be too big for your frame, but if you move it around to the spot you want... or even apply a motion path to it so it could either look like a closeup of the screen or a closeup and pan/tilt of the screen.

The image appears to come in at its correct size. I have to apply 'Maintain aspect ratio' to get it to fit the screen.

[David W. Richardson]

Can you do a screen shot of your preview window, so we can see what's going on?

A screenshot of my preview window would look like crap. I can capture a still from the timeline, though. Give me a minute.

[David W. Richardson]

Okay, let's see if I can get the image in here now...

http://www.chapelgrovefilms.com/desktop-vidcap.bmp (http://www.chapelgrovefilms.com/desktop-vidcap.bmp)

Not sure how helpful that is, though. Obviously, that ain't the way it looks on the TV screen. But you can see that the text on the icons is distorted. The icons themselves don't look nearly that sharp on the TV screen.

[Tom Marshall]

The icons will never look that sharp on a regular TV set. It just doesn't have the level of components that an LCD screen has. It will always be slightly blurry. As far as the text, you're not getting a 1:1 size from your screen grab. It has to exactly match the resolution of your screen in order for the text to not be distorted.

[seunosewa]

You should probably do the resizing in Photoshop and not your NLE.

A 800x600 screenshot of my desktop looks pretty nice when I resize and vertically blend it using Virtualdub. It's soft, but I can read everything on the screen. I don't think it can look better than that on an interlaced TV. The vertical blending shouldn't be necessary for a flat screen TV if you edit and render in progressive mode.

[jeremytuttle]

I agree that the best bet is to resize first and then bring it in the NLE. Now Tommy is right. So to help this. You could start with a wide shot of the PC capture (full screen) and then do a extreme closeup of the exact part you want readable. They do this in movies all the time. They will cut in a close up of the name the hero is typing into the super secret database, so each letter they type in is large or if on a theater screen, it's six feet tall.

[David W. Richardson]

So how is it, then, that TV news programs, commercials and such can have such razor-sharp graphics? I'm game to create something from scratch in PhotoShop, if it will give me a better look. But so far I'm having no luck. (Remember -- I said I was a PS neophyte.)

[jeremytuttle]

As far as the text, you're not getting a 1:1 size from your screen grab. It has to exactly match the resolution of your screen in order for the text to not be distorted.

Unless your screen resolution is 720x480 or whatever your window is set at, your NLE is shrinking your screen to fit your preview window, which will make it look like crap, it will guesstimate which pixels to keep and which ones to disregard. So resize it in PS first.

[David W. Richardson]

I agree that the best bet is to resize first and then bring it in the NLE. Now Tommy is right. So to help this. You could start with a wide shot of the PC capture (full screen) and then do a extreme closeup of the exact part you want readable. They do this in movies all the time. They will cut in a close up of the name the hero is typing into the super secret database, so each letter they type in is large or if on a theater screen, it's six feet tall.

Okay, you have to understand the nature of the project. This is for my feature 'Tangled Web'. The ENTIRE movie is seen from the POV of webcams attached to the computers of the main characters. This means EVERYTHING is seen on top of these simulated Windows desktops.

The Windows desktop itself will only be seen briefly (a minute or two) in the opening, but the remainder of the movie is 'video chat windows'. That means I need a box surrounding the 'chat window', with a title bar at the top. That title bar needs text, of course.

So the simulated Windows desktop is full screen, as are the various video chat window boxes. That's what I'm up against. I need one fake Windows (or Mac or Linux, I really don't care) and 3 (or more, really) different simulated full-screen "chat window" boxes -- which will have solid green interiors, allowing me to composite in the video for each one.

I need readable text and sharp icons. This is critical to the story.

[jeremytuttle]

Ok, I need to stew on that one for a second. My first thought is After Effects but maybe we can make it easier on you.

One thing you could try (just thinking out loud here)... this won't solve your ICON problem but it may get closer to what you want... is, in Photo Shop just make your boxes and borders for your chat windows. Then in Premiere, use the Title creator to make your font and place it in the correct spots on the boxes and/or borders. Fonts created in your NLE come out sharper for some reason.

[GageFX]

The icons will never look that sharp on a regular TV set.

http://www.buddy-icons.info/content/smileys/yahoo_hypnotized.gif

Is this not understood?


I need readable text and sharp icons. This is critical to the story.

??? This is why computer screens have such higher resolution. You'll never get that clarity on an SD TV, and you will still have issues at 720. 1080 should be fine. What you are asking for is not possible. Your best bet is to choose a font that is easier to read at those low resolutions.

Even if you compare a 640x480 computer display with the same thing on a TV, the TV will be fuzzy. It's the nature of how the two different display types work.

[Tom Marshall]

If you're just showing a static screen, then by all means just throw something together in Photoshop. I've read that you say you're not a Photoshop expert, so I'd be happy to help you out. Post something similar to what you want (even using colored boxes) and I'll play around with if if I get some free time...

I'm assuming you know the exact dimensions of the overlay area that you're comping the computer display image onto?

And by the way, if you DO attempt to make something razor sharp (like a compter LCD display) and it looks *too* sharp, it will most likely take a few viewers out of the moment and break the "suspended belief" of the movie...


EDIT: By the way, DON'T put a green box onto the spot where you want to comp the display onto. make a rectangle out of gaff tape in a cross. I can't find an image on Google to save my life... let me know if you don't follow what I mean.

[David W. Richardson]

Ok, I need to stew on that one for a second. My first thought is After Effects but maybe we can make it easier on you.

One thing you could try (just thinking out loud here)... this won't solve your ICON problem but it may get closer to what you want... is, in Photo Shop just make your boxes and borders for your chat windows. Then in Premiere, use the Title creator to make your font and place it in the correct spots on the boxes and/or borders. Fonts created in your NLE come out sharper for some reason.

Excellent idea! I'll give that a try. Thanks!