Need onscreen image of Win desktop

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David W. Richardson

Chapelgrove Films
For my new movie 'Tangled Web', I need a full-screen, high res image of a Windows desktop -- actually 3 different desktops.

I've arranged to use a program to create a customized 'skin' for Windows, which should eliminate any licensing/copyright problems with Microsoft.

What I need to know is how to do the capture to get the image into Premiere 6.0. I've tried doing printscreen and pasting it into PhotoShop, but the resulting image looks AWFUL in Premiere, no matter what format or settings I use when saving in PS. It's fuzzy, indistinct, and gets what I would call 'moire' patterns.

Anybody have any ideas?

Thanks!

David
 
moire patterns mostly happen when a program is trying to shrink a picture to fit it into a smaller screen area. Is your Photoshop blank pic (before you paste the screendump onto it) the same resolution as your desktop?
 
I believe it is, but I'll double-check that.

Any idea how to get a sharper resolution on the desktop image? The icons and lettering are much too fuzzy. I've tried setting the screen resolution to the highest possible before doing the print-screen capture, but that doesn't seem to make any difference. I've used the 'sharpen' tool in PS, but it's still much too fuzzy. Any suggestions?

Thanks!
 
I'm mystified - any screen capture function should capture at full resolution, so the resulting pic should look identically sharp (when viewed at 100%) as the original screen.

Does Photoshop have a screen capture function (as opposed to the standard Windows one)? Paintshop Pro (which I use) does. Could be woth a try, just to see if the result looks any different
 
Problem is, I have to paste the screen-print into something and save it before I can pull it into Premiere. I've tried both PhotoShop and Paint for this, but still having problems.

It may be related to the resolution issue. I was reading that if you resize the image, it can lead to fuzziness. The frame size in Premiere is 720x480, but I can't change my Windows screen settings to those dimensions. So anything I capture and paste into PhotoShop is going to be at least 1024x768. There's no way to resize that proportionally into a 720x480 frame, and resizing disproportionally seems to be the cause of the blurriness. Hmmm.....

This ain't gonna be as easy as I'd hope. :/
 
clang said:
I'm mystified - any screen capture function should capture at full resolution, so the resulting pic should look identically sharp (when viewed at 100%) as the original screen.

Does Photoshop have a screen capture function (as opposed to the standard Windows one)? Paintshop Pro (which I use) does. Could be woth a try, just to see if the result looks any different
Click to expand...

Apparently the answer is no -- PhotoShop doesn't have a screen capture function. Drat!

I wonder if a capture utility like WinCam 2000 Pro might be a better option? Anybody ever used it?
 
Go to Google Images and search for "windows desktop" ... You should be able to find some images that you can tweak and alter to make what you need.
 
Good idea, Mark.

I'm still wondering if WinCam 2000 Pro would do the trick? It would be nice to do some things that, without something like WinCam, I'd have to do via animation.

For instance, I want the mouse pointer to move across the desktop, open and close windows, maximize/minimize windows, select items from a list, etc. All of these things would be much easier to accomplish if I could just record the actual actions on the desktop to an .AVI file, like WinCam says it will do. Guess I could download the trial and see how it works. Can't hurt, eh? :)
 
BTW.......I'm suddenly under the gun! I found a film festival I want to enter 'Tangled Web' into, and the deadline for entries is March 31st. Six days to get post finished, including this little dealie with the Windows desktop stuff. Gotta love the pressure!

Now if I could only find someone to make me some really COOL animated opening titles! :)
 
Well, let's revisit this topic...

I'm still not finding a way to get a Windows desktop image into Premiere without it going fuzzy on me -- the text on the icons is almost unreadable. I can only image what it will look like when someone blows it up on a 52" plasma TV in their living room!

I downloaded the trial verson of WinCam 2000 Pro and did a test capture to a .AVI -- still the same sharpness problem. Even applying the 'sharpen' tool in Premiere doesn't help much.

So now I'm at a loss. The only solution appears to be to create simulated desktops from scratch using PhotoShop and saving them as bitmaps. But I have absolutely no artistic skills in that area. I'd much rather use a real Windows desktop (with a 'skin' applied) and capture using something like WinCam 2000, since that would allow me to animate (quite easily) things like mouse movements, opening folders, launching chat windows, etc.

Any more ideas on this? I really appreciate the help!
 
David,

I think you may be dealing with some physical properties that are going to be difficult to surmount. You see, you are trying to work in a frame size that is smaller than the image you are working with (if I understand you correctly). As I understand it, you are dealing with a standard frame of 720 x 480. The desktop image is quite a bit higher resolution AND it is using single pixels for many of the features of the icon font titles. Thus, when you try to reduce the desktop image you are inevitably asking PhotoShop or Premiere or anything else to SCALE down an image that is already at the minimum size of your picture element. Of necessity, the font titles are going to be hard to read because you are working with a 720 x 480 pixel array that simply cannot show the resolution you are asking of it. It tries, by using sophisticated anti-aliasing but you perceive this as "fuzziness". That you can "sort of" make out the icon titles is a function of that technology and not a limitation.

Try using your camera to shoot a laptop screen that matches approxmiately the same resolution you are going for and see how readable the titles are. My guess is that you'll find the same problem simply because of the pixel limitation of 720 x 480 SD.

My suggested approach would be to try reducing the size of your desktop screen to 640 x 480 and THEN screen capture it. That way your desktop is LESS resolution than your target and you should be able to see the icon titles (at the expense of the nice big screen real estate of course).
 
Mark Johnson said:
David,

I think you may be dealing with some physical properties that are going to be difficult to surmount. You see, you are trying to work in a frame size that is smaller than the image you are working with (if I understand you correctly). As I understand it, you are dealing with a standard frame of 720 x 480. The desktop image is quite a bit higher resolution AND it is using single pixels for many of the features of the icon font titles. Thus, when you try to reduce the desktop image you are inevitably asking PhotoShop or Premiere or anything else to SCALE down an image that is already at the minimum size of your picture element. Of necessity, the font titles are going to be hard to read because you are working with a 720 x 480 pixel array that simply cannot show the resolution you are asking of it. It tries, by using sophisticated anti-aliasing but you perceive this as "fuzziness". That you can "sort of" make out the icon titles is a function of that technology and not a limitation.

Try using your camera to shoot a laptop screen that matches approxmiately the same resolution you are going for and see how readable the titles are. My guess is that you'll find the same problem simply because of the pixel limitation of 720 x 480 SD.

My suggested approach would be to try reducing the size of your desktop screen to 640 x 480 and THEN screen capture it. That way your desktop is LESS resolution than your target and you should be able to see the icon titles (at the expense of the nice big screen real estate of course).
Click to expand...

Well, I tried setting the desktop to 640x480 -- and this made my icons and text HUGE. Much too big to look remotely normal. So I'm afraid that won't help me.

Any other ideas?
 
chapelgrovefilms said:
Well, I tried setting the desktop to 640x480 -- and this made my icons and text HUGE. Much too big to look remotely normal. So I'm afraid that won't help me.

Any other ideas?
Click to expand...

What you experienced was a simple illustration of your problem. You have said you are working with a 720 x 480 image size in Preimiere. You've been trying to somehow show a full 1024 x 768 desktop image in the lower resolution and have the icons and titles be legible. It's physically not possible because the icon titles are using text drawn with single pixel lines. The letter "I" you see as I type this is one pixel in width. Notice what happens when I go up and change the size to the smallest choice available:


small font: I Bigger font: I

​

See how the smaller "I" is made shorter but still is the same width as the bigger one? That's because your screen is drawing this text with single pixel lines - the smallest image element available. You cannot make the text smaller in width because you are at the limits of your screen resolution.

So, your problem is that you are telling Premiere you want to work with an image size of 720 x 480 pixels and you are trying to give it a desktop image that is 1024 x 768 pixels wide that you want shrunk down. There is no possible way to do that without introducing some blur or fuzziness. You can't reduce a single pixel width below your screen resolution and have it remain sharp and distinct. The software attempts to compromise by using a technique called "aliasing" which is what you see as "fuzziness."

Look at this image:

1207745698.jpg


The image on the left is a cross drawn with single pixel lines. I've enlarged it 1600%. Now, I took the same original image and REDUCED it to 50% its original size. That means I'm asking PhotoShop to convert those single pixel lines to half their size. It does the best it can by using shades of gray to try and redraw the shrunken pixels. The result is the "fuzziness" you are seeing.

The ONLY solution available to you is to shoot your film on HD where you'll have a frame size that is equivalent to the screen size you're trying to show. Of course, if you then try to shrink your nice HD movie down to standard resolution you're going to have the same problems you're experiencing here.

Have you ever noticed that you almost never see news anchors wearing pin-striped shirts? If they did you'd see a psychedelic wavering of moire patterns because of the same phenomenom we're discussing here.

The only possible last suggestion I can give you is to open your "Display Properties" tab in your control panel. You can change the font size for your icons there. If you choose "Large Fonts" you'll get icon titles drawn bigger which will be more legible when you srhink the screen. You will likely not be happy with the look because you're used to the nice crisp images on your 1024 x 768 screen and the larger fonts look sort of clunky. However, maybe when you shrink it down you'll get a look that is readable and not too strange looking.

Otherwise, borrow an HD camera from a buddy and shoot at higher resolution.
 
Here's a few samples I did on a 1024 x 768 screen. Current windows font is 'ms sans serif' font size = 8.
----------
1/
Icon font size = 8, Normal. Screen captured and scaled to 720 x 480.
fontsize8_normal.jpg

----------
2/
Icon font size incresed to 10, Bold.
Screen captured and scaled to 720 x 480.
fontsize10_bold.jpg

----------
3/
Icon font size = 8, Normal. Screen captured.Not scaled. Instead cropped around image.
font size normal...
normal_cropped.jpg

------------
So 2/ to is better than 1/ and 3/ is the best.

So maybe you could capture your screen as in my case 1024 x 480.
Center your icons in an area of 720 x 480 and crop (not resize) the full screen in post.
The problem there is the application windows sizes. If if you can keep those small in the frame your set.

Another way may be to try a program that allows using graphics fonts that are pre-aliased. It seems like those windows custom skin programs can do that with the right font. I'm not positive.

Another would be to photoshop new text over the old and add in post.
 
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