A few days ago, I bought a new flatscreen (LCD) monitor. The key feature that I'm focusing on in this thread is the response time of an LCD monitor (and whether or not that has a bearing on the quality of the screenshots that can be obtained with a given LCD monitor).
The goal is optimization of the quality of screenshots.
The flatscreen/LCD monitor I bought has a response time of 8 ms. The other flatscreen/LCD monitor I was seriously considering buying has a response time of 2 ms. I went with the 8 ms monitor because it has a 20-inch screen and cost $70 less than the 2 ms monitor that has only a 19-inch screen. In terms of visual impact, there is a big difference between a 20-inch screen and a 19-inch screen.
However, it didn't dawn on me until after I got home with the new monitor that the response time might have a direct bearing on the quality of screenshots that I'm able to get from the movies that I watch on my computer.
I've never owned an LCD monitor before (and I still haven't hooked up the one that I just bought). However, I've noticed with my CRT monitor that in trying to make high-quality screenshots of fast-moving action on the screen (such as in a porn movie when people are fucking fast), the screenshots come out a little blurry around the edges of the things that are moving fast. Whereas, with an LCD monitor, I'm wondering if this would be less of a problem with a 2 ms monitor than with an 8 ms one.
If it turns out that a 2 ms monitor will make noticeably higher quality screenshots than can be made with an 8 ms monitor, than I'll exchange the 8 ms monitor I bought for a 2 ms one.
I would appreciate any advice offered on this matter. Thanks.
#SDNY he's all yours. -- Michael Steele 5110 Posts 3/03
Posted - Aug 8 2006 : 12:31AM
The monitor's response time won't have any bearing on the appearance of a stationary image like a screen shot. Whether you get a good image or a blurry image is going to be determined by the quality of the source material and the quality of your video capture hardware and software.
The way I was looking at it, Harri, is that the quality of the stationary image might be dependent on the response time of the monitor. With a 2 ms monitor, during fast movements on the screen, I thought that would mean that objects on the screen would be less blurred than with an 8 ms monitor. Therefore, if I paused the action and made a screenshot, I thought the stationary image would be clearer, thus making for a a cleaner, higher-quality screenshot (with all else being equal: i.e., source material, video capture hardware, software).
Okay, Harri, since I have no control over the source material, then I need to make sure I have (or get) very high-quality video capture hardware and software. As far as software goes, I've been using CyberLink's PowerDVD 6. And since I just bought a new cpu (HP Pavilion a1510n), the quality of the video capture hardware on that machine is presumably better than that of the video capture hardware on my three and a half year old machine.
God hates us all, you know it's true, God hates this place. - Slayer 1726 Posts 10/03
Posted - Aug 8 2006 : 6:40AM
Probably not. Screen capturing is really low end stuff in the full spectrum of things, but if we were talking video capturing then I would say yes.
Example, when I first started my website, I was on an AGP Radeon 8700 video card. I was on that card for a very long time. I switched over to a PCIe 7800GT, a MUCH better video card, and my screen shots never really changed.
Key thing is what application you use to edit, if any of your screens. Also the format in which they are captured his key too. BMPs have less compression so that would be a good format to capture to - I know WinDVD caps to that format as well as JPG.
"The universe is hostile, So impersonal. Devour to survive." - Tool
Your PowerDVD 6 software will give you great screencaps. You've got plenty of quality in your new machine. I wouldn't spend a dime on trying to "improve" your hardware and/or upgrade your video card.
What I would recommend you get, assuming you don't already have it, would be a competent photo-editing program such as Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.
PowerDVD 6 will create your screencaps as bitmaps. A full-size bitmap screencap will be about 1 MB in size (which is huge if you plan to e-mail images, etc.). What I do is, open my screencap bitmaps with Adobe Photoshop Elements 4, edit them (screencaps almost always need editing to become useful pics) then save them in ANY format you choose.
Adobe Photoshop Elements 4 even has a "Save For Web" feature that creates JPEGs specifically tailored for posting to the Web and/or e-mails -- at any size (i.e. quality level) you need! Very useful.
Also, screencaps (actually the DVD source material itself), typically suffer from over-saturated colors (e.g. people look "purple," etc.) that Adobe Photoshop Elements 4 also helps you clean-up. Again, very useful.
I had been using HP Image Zone (which I thought was pretty good, but it can't compete with what BigBobxxx recommended).Adobe Photoshop Elements 4 is on my definite buy list. Thanks, BigBobxxx.
God hates us all, you know it's true, God hates this place. - Slayer 1726 Posts 10/03
Posted - Aug 8 2006 : 5:36PM
Nah it's easy!
Just have to download and install the GTK+ 2 Runtime Environment (version 2.8.18, for Windows 2000 and newer) first and then download and install the The GIMP for Windows (version 2.2.12)/
Posted - Aug 8 2006 : 12:17AM