Author: John

and all the pieces matter

and-all-the-pieces-matter
Gif using gifboard

This is a quick intro to installing videogrep.py a tool for making supercut movies. Written in haste, consider it a rough draft.

Videogrep is a python program run from the command line. This is quite different from using applications with a GUI. I am hoping to write up a few different tools I use for playing DS106 and will try and come back and expand on this.

More about Videogrep: Automatic Supercuts with Python – Sam Lavigne.

Code: antiboredom/videogrep · GitHub.

Caveats

  • I am no expert in using the command line. I’ve failed on quite a few attempts at installing.
  • As with a lot of software you can make mistakes, bad things can happen. You will be giving the software author control over your computer.
  • I am using Mac OS X
  • There is not a lot of detail here, I’ll come back and improve if it seems useful.
  • It is probably sensible to read all of the linked pages here rather than just go on trust.

Dependencies

Videogrep depends on a few python modules and programs. These are installed with pip (A tool for installing and managing Python packages) which you may need to install.

You also need to install FFMPEG (FFmpeg is a free software project that produces libraries and programs for handling multimedia data. ). One way to install FFmpg is with homebrew, which you need to install first!

Homebrew and ffmpeg

Homebrew, is a package manager it is installed and used via the commandline so you will need to open the terminal app.

You run stuff in the terminal by typing (or pasting) after the prompt my prompt is johnj:~ john$ if I am in my home directory which is called johnj

On the Homebrew site you can copy a line of text which if pasted into the terminal will install homebrew when you press return. I’d go to the site and copy from there rather than from here.

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/go/install)"

The script explains what it will do and then pauses before it does it.

Once the script has finished it will recommend running:

brew doctor

To check all is ok, so type that and hit return, wait a while and the prompt returns. you can now install FFmpeg. The videogrep notes suggest you do with this:

brew install ffmpeg --with-libvpx --with-libvorbis

So try that, type it in at the prompt in the terminal, lots of text should stream by, by the time it stops FFmpeg should be installed. You can check by typing

ffmpeg -h

Which will display the help.

pip

Next you want to install pip, which lets you install other stuff. Again at the prompt type:

easy_install pip

Some text will go by and the prompt should come back.

Videogrep

Finally

Down load the zip file from antiboredom/videogrep · GitHub unzip and put it somewhere handy, your desktop folder for example.

The folder is called ‘videogrep-master’ I’ve just left it as that.

Inside the folder is a txt file requirements.txt this lists the python modules that you need to install, you don’t need to open it. Back in the terminal, cd into the videogrep folder:

cd path/to/folder

to do that type cd at the prompt and drag the folder into the terminal window, I see:

johnj john$ cd /Users/john/Desktop/videogrep-master

hit return and type:

pip install -r requirements.txt

and return again a ton of text will scroll past as past.

At the end, unless you have errors you are ready to go.

First cut

You need a video file and an srt file to match, there names must be the same except for the extension, eg:

  • The Wire Season 1 Episode 06 – The Wire.avi
  • The Wire Season 1 Episode 06 – The Wire.srt

If you followed the above steps your prompt should show you are in the videogrep-master folder:

johnj:videogrep-master john$

type:

python videogrep.py --input path/to/srt file  --search pieces --output pieces.mp4

more text scrolls past the terminal. A video pieces.mp4 appears in the folder, it is the supercut video.

 

Problems along the way

I had a couple, first in installing the requirments.txt I kept getting errors about pattern. To solve this I went to pattern, downloaded pattern and installed it. I then removed that line from requirments.txt and saved it before running pip install -r requirements.txt again.

The second problem I had was the movies created had no sound. I didn’t fix that, I just used miro video converter to convert the files to apple or iphone ones which did the trick. I am guessing this could have been fixed with ffmpeg too as miro video converter is, as far as I know, a gui for ffmpeg.

a little slow, a little late

Be a Little Slow

You cannot lose if you do not play.

My first post here since April! I missed the whole of the burgeon experience and have done only a handful of daily creates. I am not saying sorry, I have made a few artefacts and experimented with some stuff that is pretty #ds106. There is no really useful instructions in this post, but links for the willing.

Videogrep.py

I’ve been meaning to post about this for a while, I did a few tests in June and tweeted a bit about it. It is pretty cool:

Videogrep is a python script that searches through dialog in videos and then cuts together a new video based on what it finds. Basically, it’s a command-line “supercut” generator.

from: Videogrep: Automatic Supercuts with Python – Sam Lavigne

Here is a quick test:

And a link to another: blade runner know

I’ve not even scratched the surface of videogrep, there are some pretty amazing ideas on the link.

I had a wee bit of difficulty installing videogrep, and had, as I recall, to wander round googling to get things running. The videos produced lacked sound, but running them through miro video converter fixed that. I am guessing if you are command line savvy enough the code could be adjusted.

Here is a supercut for Barksdale in episode 1 of the wire.

gifboard

Apocalypse.now Jungle 1

More Jungle gifboards

On the back of the jungle supercut I revisited using gifboard to create automatic subtitled gifs. I notice Jim pointing to something similar. yesterday.

Both gifboard and videogrep are command line applications and not for the faint hearted.

I dusted off gifboard for a quick slice of the wire:

Rolling Bones

glitching

With a little encouragement from Mariana, I dipped my toes back into glitching world, I am afraid no movie glitchs I made were of any interest, but I had better luck with sonicification of images after Alan posted Image Bending in Audacity.

Repeating Gifs

I’ve long admired some gifs I’ve seen on tumblr that repeat across the page, during the recent giffight on emblems here are mine I figured out how to do this:

Rooster Gang

Basically a lot of copy and pasting.

Emblem Multi 500

During the emblems giffight Andrew Forgrave produced some great anaglyph gifs and some tutorials around them from which I gained a lot (globe-of-doom-anaglyph-1 | Flickr – Photo Sharing!).

The Wire

I’ve been a big fan of the wire so hoped to throw myself into some ds106 activity, turns out re-watching series one I mostly get caught up in enjoying it and following the plot, not much analysis going on here. Hopefully I get some fun before the series is out.

pechaGif

a random ds106 gif A random Gif

A while back I posted about the DS106 random gif api, a rather daft piece of fun: 106 drop in » Blog Archive » Gif Scraping and a DS106 Gif API. The api seems to be working well and I’ve used it on DS106 GiF TV which is still a work in progress.

Yesterday I had a thought to make a simpler example of using the API and that an idea might be to riff off Alan’s pechaflickr making a version that showed animated gifs.

pechaGif

This afternoon I took a first run at this. I’ve not copied any of Alan’s code just borrowed the idea. The pechaGif loads 20 random gifs and them displays a start button. Clicking that will full screen 20 gifs for 20 seconds each.

The page just uses javascript and I’ve kept everything in one file in case anyone wants to use it to see how the gif API works.

I did not expect anyone to make use of this, but Mariana suggested:

 

So I guess I may add that to the assignment bank, might give it a go myself first.

Go Jim, Stop Jim

Riffing off this: Educator, Learner | Animate (SOME) of the GIFs! – Educator, Learner
And recalling this: Not an animated gif

Click Jim to toggle the animation.

I’ve piut this in Mozilla Thimble if you want to remix or look at code: toggle sprite.

Why Gif?

There is an interesting conversation going on over in the DS106 google group. Sandy Brown Jensen makes some great points which finish with

So for me it has nothing to do with the aesthetics of the gif itself and more to do with crafting a context where placing a gif makes sense.

.Sandy has a great riff in her first column which I’ll leave readers to read in context, but here basic question is:

First of all, figure out your objectives in the cognitive realm, i.e. why do you want to make a gif at all?

This is a question that I sort of asked a while back, But is Gif Art? and had a couple of good answers in the comments. I’d like to expand my ideas here with a few examples. I am sticking to gifs I’ve made, there are a ton of better examples on the

Before I started DS106, like many I though of gifs as the under construction images from geocities websites of the last century. It took me a while to come round.

I had been reading and following ds106 mostly through Jim Groom’s blog when
on a rainy afternoon I wrote:

One of the things that the ds106 folk have been doing is creating animated gifs from very short sections of movies. I am still not sure if I see the whole point of this, but it becomes a very addictive process.


The above gif is, I think, the first one I published, I like it because it isolates an emotion from a movie I like a lot, to me it is some sort of visual commentary on the movie. I was also interested in the process of creating gifs, and this involved some creativity (perhaps not artistic) as I designed my own method.
Later that year I Joined DS106 I had by then been inspired by ds106 and this joined up some dots for me. At that point I could rip a gif from a movie and was mostly interested in keeping the file size down!

This gif is a celebration of DS106 and the energy of Jim Groom in particular, it is 8 frames that I returned too again and again and eventually made a small ds106 meme.

Jim’s Excellent Ted Adventure, Jim in the Air(plane) and Dancing Jim Over the World. These are part joke, part riff on various ideas, they do not tell a story in themselves but become part of a community story that both celebrates Jim and pokes some fun.

I hope the next gif did tell a story, it tries to show a different side of Jack Kerouac.

Most of the Kerouac I’ve seen have been chat show footage with a drunk Kerouac. This clip shows his gentler side.

Like many other folk who watch and enjoy old gangster films, I’ve giffed a few gunshots in my time, I usually feel a bit uneasy about this. It is easy in the relative safety of Scotland, with unarmed police and little gun crime to be complacent, this gif plays with that sentiment:

Over the course of a few rounds of DS106 I’ve become a regular giffer, I’ve a Tumblr full, some from ds106 assignments, some just for fun, some created from movies and some in various other ways. Some are saying look at this, is it not interesting or beautiful. Some are jokes, some are experiments with software, some play with the random and serendipitous. Some have made me see in a different way, to think a bit more visually. Some just provide some relaxation, finding a nice clip spotting a giffable moment, digging it out, optimising it is just nice.

This one is from a film I love and have giffed a few times, Il Gattopardo, the film is made at a different speed that most hollywood offerings, I hope the gif tells some of that.

The next one was, to me, interesting for a couple of reasons, one, it explains something, or give a view and two to make it I created a system so that I can knock similar gifs up in a few seconds when needed to help discuss or explain something.

Ds106 gifs are social, gifs often seem to asks to be reused, remixed, pinged and ponged between groups, there is a special joy when your gif is mixed into something else.

I am not a particularly visual person, as I worried in my first ds106 post:

I am a wee bit nervous about jumping into something that requires visual creativity. While I am happy enough editing images, audio and video I am not good at visual thinking or design.

I preferred podcasting to video because it avoids the difficulties of the moving image. Gifs have given me a way to play with visual elements, think about them notice thing I would have missed and keep alert for the possibilities scrolling by.

I hope that someone, Sandy?, looking a  the first page or two of my tumbling would get a sense of some purpose, fun and diversity rather than things that are mindless and crazy-making as any uncontrollable tic, or at least enjoy the madness around:

For me, instinctively & briefly, gifs are at the heart of #ds106  driven by energy originating from Jim Groom and riffed through the participants. They can disrupt patterns of thought and play havoc with our idea of what a ‘story’ is.