About the Image Galleries
The image galleries you see assembled here come from my personal
collection of films. While our household isn't really that of
a gearhead, we do have a wide assortment of hardware which went
into the production of the galleries. A lot has changed since
this site first went online in 1999, so I thought I would update it
to reflect what is being used to produce the material for the site as
of 2001.
VCR: A Go Video 5500 deck. A marvelous piece of machinery. This is our main piece of videotape equipment, though we
have various other makes of VCR around the house. I think we had six decks at last count.
DVD: A Pioneer 414. Inexpensive and great quality. Getting a bit long in the tooth now and soon to be sent to the Big Repair Shop In The Sky,
but still servicable for now. We have four DVD players around though, just in case the Pioneer goes belly-up ahead of schedule.
capture hardware/software for DVD and VCD: Samsung DVD-ROM SD-608. A nice little DVD player for
the PC. It can handle all region codes (indefinitely if you finess it a little) and gives a nice capture when used in conjunction with
PowerDVD which came bundled with it.
capture hardware/software for laserdisc and videotape: Pinnacle Systems Studio USB. A nifty little doo-dad which will
accept any video input directly into a PC. Unfortunately it can't go through a USB hub because it generates too much
data for a split port, it has to have its own port so if you want one, keep in mind you'll have to dedicate one to it alone.
Other than that, works like a champ. The Studio software which accompanies it is pretty powerful for a low-end editing suite;
if I remember correctly, the Pinnacle with the bundled Studio software was under $150.
other hardware/software: Also used for various tasks is a Yamaha CRW842E CD-ROM, GoldWave, WinAmp, Adaptec CD Creator (which also makes
VCDs, by the way) and a couple of stray bits of equipment including one of the (in)famous Apex AD600A models. Oh, and we do have a TV. Actually
three, but it's the one with the big Boses attached to it that makes Dai Jeung Fu Yat Gei so much fun. ;)
computer hardware: A homemade Intel 500 box, nothing particularly special. Joe (the other half) is an engineer, so in return for being fed on a regular
basis he homebrews PCs as we need them.
image manipulation: PaintShopPro - the 16 bit version. No, I am not a Luddite.
It just happens to work well for me, does not have an overabundance of dingleberries and
gets the job done quickly and efficiently. A vast number of screen captures I have
seen on the 'Net are fuzzy, dark and green. This is how they tend to come out of a
screen capture's software, it's not the fault of the operator nor of the source material.
It's just how these things work. It only takes a little tweaking in any image manipulation
program (PSP just happens to be my choice) to tighten, brighten and color correct these
problems. To see an example of what a screen capture may look like Before and
After, take this example of a screen cap done from the film All About Ah Long of
a scene in a darkened room:
nbsp;nbsp;
beforenbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;after
If you've attempted to make screen caps (using either external hardware or directly
from a DVD drive in your computer) and have been dismayed with the results, try it
again and play around with the images in the paint program of your choice. You'll see
that it's not difficult, even if it is time-consuming, to get some decent images out
of a capture.
In the last couple of years I've relented a little bit, and I do use PhotoImpact for
some tasks (such as the generation of the multi-colored type you see on the site now).
For the most part though, good old PSP works just fine, thankyouverymuch. =)
Every once in a while someone will ask me how long it took to put all of this
stuff together, the galleries, reviews, audio and video and the HTML shell around
it all. The initial site was about 200 hours, and in the two years after that I've
put maybe 300 or 400 hours into it. Sometimes I'll work on it obsessively for
ten hours in a day for three days straight, and then other times I won't even look
at it for a month.
The best part of being the page maintainer is the people I've met via the site. Haven,
Bunny, Pat, Chrissy, Pam and lots and lots of others. There have been a few weirdos too and so
far one death threat, but it's been an overall very pleasant experience and I'm very
grateful to CYF for being the common interest which has pulled us all together.
- Leigh
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