Inspector#capture_frame - support for multiple frames in one command

[Seth Thomas Rasmussen]

The current Inspector#capture_frame API has no support for generating
multiple frames with one command. e.g. You want frames every 10
seconds from whatever offset your timecode argument specifies.

So, I'm going to add this feature. I'm not sure whether or not to
break the existing API to support this. I'll could try to support the
old API and have the new API operate using a single options hash
passed to capture_frame:

inspector.capture_frame :offset => 10, :interval => 10

This could work out except that the old output_file argument would
have to change its semantics now. If you specify an interval for
capturing multiple frames, the output_file argument needs to be
treated like a template from which multiple unique names can be
generated. Any feedback around this issue would be appreciated.

One other thing that I kind of want to change: I don't think it makes
sense that capture_frame is on Inspector. Why not have it on
Transcoder?

--
Seth Thomas Rasmussen
http://greatseth.com

[Seth Thomas Rasmussen]

On Feb 23, 12:06 pm, Seth Thomas Rasmussen <sethrasmus...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> One other thing that I kind of want to change: I don't think it makes
> sense that capture_frame is on Inspector. Why not have it on
> Transcoder?

Or perhaps another class? I dunno. Inspector seems like it should just
be an inspector, yeknow.

[Jon Dahl]

Hi Seth - I don't think capture_frame is being used much as-is, and I think it would be a good idea to move it off of Inspector, to its own class.

The "frame every 10 seconds" feature would be great. Another useful one: X frames distributed evenly across the video. So you could ask for 10 frames, and on a 20 minute video, you'd get one every 2 minutes or so.

Jon

[Brandon Arbini]

On Feb 23, 2009, at 11:20 AM, Jon Dahl wrote:

> it would be a good idea to move it off of Inspector, to its own class.

Agreed!

> The "frame every 10 seconds" feature would be great. Another useful
> one: X frames distributed evenly across the video. So you could ask
> for 10 frames, and on a 20 minute video, you'd get one every 2
> minutes or so.

If we're doing feature requests: a setting for randomizing the
thumbnail selection (within some sort of tolerance) to prevent gaming
would be awesome.

-Brandon

[Seth Thomas Rasmussen]

I'm curious what the application of such a feature is. Can you
elaborate on a use case?

And to be sure I understand: you want something like "give me N frames
from random intervals"?

[Brandon Arbini]

On Feb 23, 2009, at 11:44 AM, Seth Thomas Rasmussen wrote:

> I'm curious what the application of such a feature is. Can you
> elaborate on a use case?
>
> And to be sure I understand: you want something like "give me N frames
> from random intervals"?

On a lot of the UGC sites, less-than-reputable people figure out which
frame will get grabbed and used as the poster frame on the site and
craft a video with an advertisement at that exact frame. It used to
happen a lot on YouTube (maybe it still does?). Essentially, an option
to vary the frame chosen within a few seconds around what would have
been naturally selected would be enough. Does that make sense?

-Brandon

[Seth Thomas Rasmussen]

Yes, very interesting.. thanks for the info. :)

[Seth Thomas Rasmussen]

OK, it doesn't have all of the features we've talked about in this
thread, yet.. but I've got something started called FrameCapturer:
http://github.com/greatseth/rvideo/commit/36685cb6c668c8c3acb9ff289f4228db3d1a851f

FYI :)