Many
people have commented about the quality
of Hugo's vidcaps, so I sent him a letter
and asked him some questions. Nah, none
of those Barbara Walters things like
"if you were a flavor of Jello,
which one would it be", but some
questions about the time, hardware and
software that go into his work. I found
the answers quite surprising. He is not
producing those beautiful images with
state-of-the-art hardware, but with good
editing software, skill, and patience.
Here's the Q&AQ: Which
capture card do you use?
A:
It's an inbuilt card which came with my
Compaq Presario from a company called S3.
It's a Snappy :)
Q:
At what size do you capture your raw
images?
A:
My card allows a maximum of 640x480.
Q:
Which editing software do you use?
A:
What else but Photoshop 5.02?
Q:
How much time do you spend editing
individual frames?
A:
Around 20 minutes.
Q:
After you finish with the frames, how
long to make a montage/collage?
A:
It takes 45 minutes to an hour to
assemble the collage.
Q:
What type of source media are you using?
A:
The recent ones are from a DVD which I
bought about a month ago. The others are
from laserdiscs.
Do
you believe it? The guy is making these
with a Snappy! Given an average of 6
images per collage, that means he's
putting about 3 hours into each one AFTER
making the captures. Watching the movie
and capturing the right frames probably
takes 3-4 additional hours, so you have a
full working day invested in two
collages. I know what you're thinking,
"cut the gab and get to the
images". You got it. By the way, if
you would like this feature to continue
with other artists, tell me so, and tell
me which artists.
