Screenshots

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Revision as of 01:00, 30 October 2009 by Duki (talk | contribs) (→‎KMplayer)
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This article is aimed for providing useful information regarding adding screenshots to your description and the software used.

Adding screenshots to your description is generally preferred, and usually requested as it's meant to preview the video and subtitle quality for the torrent. For that reason when taking screenshots they must be in source resolution, PNG (lossless) format unless the video is anamorphic in which case they need to be in display aspect ratio.

Taking Screenshots

They can be made with most recent video players, but we generally recommend MPC, KMplayer or VLC player.

Media Player Classic (MPC)

This player comes bundled in CCCP.

If configured correctly it takes screenshots with a key combination Alt+I.
After that it gives you a Save As output where you choose the path and the picture format.

  • Note: This player takes screenshots in storage aspect ratio, which means that for anamorphic videos these screenshots need to be resized with external software such as Gimp or Photoshop so that the image doesn't appear distorted.

KMplayer

This is a powerful freeware player which by default utilises it's own internal codecs for video and displaying subtitles.

Download the latest stable release because the screenshot feature doesn't work well with external filters needed for styled subs in the latest beta.
This player also needs to be tweaked to display styled subs properly.

After the external filters are enabled, to take screenshots you have to set them to Draw to Image Itself Alt+M and in preferences you need to set filetype and capture path.

Open Preferences (F2)
Association/Capture -> Capture (tab) -> Choose your save path and filetype.

Screenshots are taken with Ctrl+E or Ctrl+A (quick Capture)
For Anamorphic video you can take "What You See" screenshot Ctrl+Alt+E or Ctrl+Alt+A but be careful not to resize the video or take them while the video is in fullscreen.

VLC Player

This is a portable, open source, standalone player which is still generally not recommended by BakaBT community unless it's a last resort.

It doesn't need to be tweaked, and the latest build can display some degree of styled subs properly. Screenshots are taken with Shift+S and they are taken in display aspect ratio for anamorphic videos as well.

Hosting Images

A list of image hosting services with automatic thumbnail generation (needed for screenshots) is given below:

  • ImageShack - does not require an account (although you'll have to upload your images under an account if you want to remove them later)
  • PhotoBucket - Not recommended for screenshots since they will manipulate high-quality JPGs (92% JPG quality cap).
  • TinyPic - does not require an account
  • xs.to - does not require an account

Adding Screenshots

Adding these tags will not do anything to your description, instead it will add screenshots just below your description using a lightbox viewer for easy viewing. If using HTML code, screenshot tags may be placed inside or outside the <html></html> tags, there is no difference in parsing either way.

[screenshot]screenshot code goes here[/screenshot]
Inserts screenshot thumbnails below the description. Thumbnails are resized to 150 pixels in width by default.
[screenshot=200]screenshot code goes here[/screenshot]
Inserts screenshot thumbnails 200 pixels wide below the description. Change 200 to the pixel width of your screenshot thumbnails as necessary.

You can add more than one block of screenshots, possibly with different size thumbnails.

[img]link to image[/img]
Will add one image. You can add as many as you like.
[url=link to image][img]link to thumbnail[/img][/url]
Allows you to explicitly define your own thumbnail images. If no thumbnail image is supplied it will use the linked image and resize it to whatever width is supplied for the thumbnail.

NOTE: Screenshots will not show up in the Sandbox, you have to go to the torrent description page in order to view them.

If thumbnail images are not used, the big images are loaded first, then resized to thumbnail-size on your screen. This makes image-loading really slow, and also make scrolling laggy, so as far as possible supply thumbnail images or use an image-host that auto-generates them.