General Questions Thread

[Kyuusai]

Originally Posted by Elhaym Van Houten

Where can I find a good anime-animated gifs?

I'll expand on this: What are the tools typically used by folks 'round here to create their animated images from video files?

I've been capturing frames by the snapshot function in my video player, then cropping and timing by hand in Photoshop/ImageReady. If need be, I open it in the GIMP to do frame-by-frame optimization. Surely there is a better way!

[Riker]

Originally Posted by Kyuusai

I'll expand on this: What are the tools typically used by folks 'round here to create their animated images from video files?

I've been capturing frames by the snapshot function in my video player, then cropping and timing by hand in Photoshop/ImageReady. If need be, I open it in the GIMP to do frame-by-frame optimization. Surely there is a better way!

If you're looking for programs that help you capture scenes from videos, you can try Virtual Dub.
Here's a tutorial on how to use it: http://forums.animesuki.com/showthread.php?t=642
After that it's your usual Photoshop/Gimp steps to make the gifs.

Actually, I capture the scenes manually like you, but that's just me. :x

[Aoie_Emesai]

Before I formatted some of my partition drives, i use that Program that comes along with Paint Shop Pro 7, but now i don't remember what it was called. It was a simple program but it did what it was suppost to have done very efficiently and good. It was simple crop, resize, reorder (if needed) and boom you're done. It didn't have any special options for animation, like special effects and suchs like a regular image editor like Coral or Adobe.

[Sonhex]

Originally Posted by Aoie_Emesai

Before I formatted some of my partition drives, i use that Program that comes along with Paint Shop Pro 7, but now i don't remember what it was called...

Animation Shop ~ very handy app for gifs, I use it all the time.

Okay, I have one. What is this...



...?

I see these on lots of Japanese sites (this one's off the TV-Tokyo site for example). I guess it's something to do with mobile phones/devices, but what exactly is the purpose of the image and how is it used?

[NightWish]

That is a 2D bar code. They hold keys or identifying bits of information (data) which in turn reference some other (normally more detailed) bits of information (held in databases). Just like the regular 1D bar codes, only holding more data in the pattern.

A mobile phone can be used to take a photo of the bar code, as published in various forms (e.g. websites). The phone can then be used to display the bar code to a reader at some other location. One simple example that comes to mind is a magazine advert for a event. If the advert includes a bar code it can be captured on a phone and then used later (at a ticket office) to automatically select the advertised event, ready for payment by card (no other human involvement). I imagine you can also buy tickets online and get a bar code as a proof of purchase, which is saved to the phone again to allow you into the event. I've not seen such systems used by the general public outside Japan, though I'm sure there are some.

Edit: Having just scanned the WikiPedia article, I realise I forgot to mention the possibility of the camera actually understanding (decoding) the bar code. This would allow the phone, if it can contact a website or remote server somewhere, to get more information about the item the bar code is on. More useful for adverts in trains and such, where a person passing might look, be interested, and take a photo for more information.

[Aoie_Emesai]

Sonhex - Ahhh...thanks for the reminder. I just couldn't remember what it was called since i'm using Coral and Adobe 7 now.

[-KarumA-]

i saw people play this game at a con, with about 9 people on a huge screen
id like to know what it is called

simply said the games were 2d, you could pick a badly giffed anime character, in one game you get put into an area with rocks and you can drop bombs to blow em up and other players, winner is the last one standing, it looked like above viewed, giffed in the old lemmings kinda way with blocks

second game was one in which they got dropped from above and had to pass differet floors with holes in em to let people through, the screen would move down at a faster pace a second as huge spinning knifes made their way down, if you stand still youd be killed so you had to move from left to right to get to the holes, somehting you had to speed up in doing every second that passed

anyone know the title of this game`?

[Sonhex]

Originally Posted by NightWish

That is a 2D bar code. They hold keys or identifying bits of information (data) which in turn reference some other (normally more detailed) bits of information (held in databases). Just like the regular 1D bar codes, only holding more data in the pattern...

Cheers NightWish. I thought it was something like that as I've seen them online and in Newtype too. I was sure it was something that required photographing or scanning...

[Proud ASIAN]

Originally Posted by Kensuke

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartoon

My question still not answered, I'm sure Cartoon are based from 2 words, Car and Toon. There is cartoon named as Tiny Toon also a few other words that are followed by Toon.

Maybe this question of mine need its own topics since in the beginning I make a new topic for it but moved by one of the Mod

[Vexx]

Linguistically, "cartoon" derives from the Italian cartone pasteboard, cartoon, augmentative of carta leaf of paper. Many English words are derived from European roots (since, duh, american english derived from europe).

American English is one of those languages that follows other languages into dark places, hits them over the head and pilfers all the cool words. Japanese is pretty much the same (many of their words are imported from Portuguese, German, or English) ... after all, if its useful, use it.

Tiny Toons is a brand name (Warner Brothers) derived from its ancestors, the Looney Tunes popular in the 30s and 40s.... again, just like the japanese language- many phrases spring up from puns and words that sound alike. "Car-toons" became a popular term during the 1950s and 1960s when "drive-in theatres" were popular.

[wao]

Here's a silly question I finally thought of.

How come in the smilies list there's a only one type of "laughing" smilie and that is ? There is a sad lack of LOL smilies and I feel that , , and do not sufficiently cover this need, while serves a different purpose. (And is it possible to throw it in somewhere?)

And I hope this hasn't been mentioned before because I'm in too silly and lazy a state to actually read anything more than the first and last pages of this thread.

[felix]

Well, there are smilie sets out there with some nice creative smilies I think I saw one with green ones a while back on a german site. Mmm.. but personally I prefer it if there were none, except the funny looking ones.
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Sorry forgot to answer your question.
First. That's not a *lol* that's a *heh* or at most a *giggle*.
Second. They won't change cuz the Admins and Mods don't want to change them and in a thread created a long time ago when it was suggested that they be changed or added to... the response was NO, on the basis that if you want to use another just post it as you do images.

[KiNA]

^ *makes me remember the old smilie thread*

edit: damn, BC beats me to it.. yea, basically admin still say no.. just like the time when we asked for a larger filesize limit to av and sig ._.

[felix]

Yeah like anybody today uses 800 x 600 resolution

[Aoie_Emesai]

I'm at 1024x768 rez, i need to get a stronger Graphics Card + MotherBoard + memory + processor. I just need a whole new computer upgrade.

[felix]

Yes Aoie I know 1024 x 768 is one of the leading resolutions, many people use it, it's not really technical, even tho' some may have the problem, it's more that they like it.
800 x 600 on the other hand is way too low, and people with monitors that were made for that sort of resolution still won't use it. Why?! Simple, with current standards they see too little functions or the interface is way too compact for confort. Unless they're browsing AS with text browsers or something.
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I'm not just saing this out of fin air, most internet polls concerning this seem to indicate that nobody goes near it. Of course there's always the posibility they're all wrong, and that 800 x 600 users are all just shy.
But I bet that if the admins scaned for resolution they won't find people with 800 x 600.

[Kyuusai]

Originally Posted by Cats

Yes Aoie I know 1024 x 768 is one of the leading resolutions, many people use it, it's not really technical, even tho' some may have the problem, it's more that they like it.
800 x 600 on the other hand is way too low, and people with monitors that were made for that sort of resolution still won't use it. Why?! Simple, with current standards they see too little functions or the interface is way too compact for confort. Unless they're browsing AS with text browsers or something.
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I'm not just saing this out of fin air, most internet polls concerning this seem to indicate that nobody goes near it. Of course there's always the posibility they're all wrong, and that 800 x 600 users are all just shy.
But I bet that if the admins scaned for resolution they won't find people with 800 x 600.

I haven't run 800x600 for years, but I do run 1024x768 at home... and I don't run my browsers in full-screen mode, so they're about the size they would be if I was in full-screen windows at 800x600. And it does work just fine: 99% of the time, no scrolling is required).

If I had to run my browsers in in full-screen windows, I might as well still be back in 1997.

[felix]

What does full-screen have to do with anything?
Mmm.. ok.. you win. I bet by other things you mean things like the text box, which is displaced at 800 x 600.
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Q. It is mentioned in the rules that you can have 2 lines of very small text with the image. Just how much is 2 lines? At 800 x 600 people might see more... then at 1280 x 1024. What if someone has some really wide monitor. Does that mean they can have more then 2 lines.

[xris]

Originally Posted by Cats

Q. It is mentioned in the rules that you can have 2 lines of very small text with the image. Just how much is 2 lines? At 800 x 600 people might see more... then at 1280 x 1024. What if someone has some really wide monitor. Does that mean they can have more then 2 lines.

Actually, you need to read those rules on sigs again since your description is incorrect.

"maximum of two (2) lines of text, assuming the default font size or smaller"

Where do we say that it has to be "very small text", the defualt text size is 2.

Anyway, for me it's two lines on a browser running in an approximate 1024x764 pixel window. or in otherwords it's subjective. If it appears to run over two lines when I view it then it will likely earn itself an infraction for an oversize sig. Different Mods might apply different standards.

And the rules will never define it better than it does at the moment since we don't want to be anal about it. Like any of the rules, you have to apply some common sense.

[felix]

That line is a little confusing, it's a little hard to get the first part.
I personally read it several time up till now on occasions and I never got that you could have have text Size 2 and text Size 1.
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> "Like any of the rules, you have to apply some common sense."

Like how Photobucket scripts add a lil' something to images, making images that would normally be around ~50000 bytes end up up to 65000 bytes (as far as I've experimented), obviously higher if the signature is composed of multiple images.
Q. Were you aware of that?

I'm curious since there are lots of deleted sigs that are around that range...
This only seems to be a Photobucket phenomenon.