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Take more screenshots (2022)

alexwlchan.net

41–50 of 178 posts

Re: Take more screenshots (2022)

#41
post #3

I actually am in a position where I need to take a screenshot but haven't found any tool on linux that has the right UX like macos builtin screenshot or on windows, greenshot and lightshot. I want to press printscr or some shortcut and immediately screenshot an area of the screen or the whole screen and by default have it saved to a numerically incrementing files under a folder I configure and not have to close or in…

I've been using https://screencloud.net/ for the past few years. Custom file naming rules, you can upload to your own FTP server, then it will automatically copy a link to the file. Works perfectly for sharing and archiving screenshots.

Re: Take more screenshots (2022)

#42

So, if I write a script that takes screenshots of my desktop every minute or so, are there any tools out there I could use to “de-dupe” based on some arbitrary threshold of similarity to existing screenshots? I imagine it would be quite straightforward for identical screenshots, but what about stuff that’s just “mostly unchanged”?

I've had a lot of success using the pixelmatch library for image comparison / deduping

https://github.com/mapbox/pixelmatch

Re: Take more screenshots (2022)

#43
post #42

So, if I write a script that takes screenshots of my desktop every minute or so, are there any tools out there I could use to “de-dupe” based on some arbitrary threshold of similarity to existing screenshots? I imagine it would be quite straightforward for identical screenshots, but what about stuff that’s just “mostly unchanged”?

I've had a lot of success using the pixelmatch library for image comparison / deduping https://github.com/mapbox/pixelmatch

Thank you, that looks perfect.

> “pixelmatch is around 150 lines of code, has no dependencies…”

Re: Take more screenshots (2022)

#44

So, if I write a script that takes screenshots of my desktop every minute or so, are there any tools out there I could use to “de-dupe” based on some arbitrary threshold of similarity to existing screenshots? I imagine it would be quite straightforward for identical screenshots, but what about stuff that’s just “mostly unchanged”?

I imagine that compressing the screenshots daily with something like gzip would do the magic for screenshots. A lot of the image would be repeated anyway, task bar, active windows, background, etc.

A good question would be if you screenshot your screen twice in a very small time, how much of the binary would be the same? Are the tools and PNG reproducible enough to dedupe most of the second file on gzip?

Re: Take more screenshots (2022)

#45

So, if I write a script that takes screenshots of my desktop every minute or so, are there any tools out there I could use to “de-dupe” based on some arbitrary threshold of similarity to existing screenshots? I imagine it would be quite straightforward for identical screenshots, but what about stuff that’s just “mostly unchanged”?

Recording the whole screen using H.264 or similar at a low frame rate might be easier.

Re: Take more screenshots (2022)

#46
Screenshot->crop->Apple Notes is very standard for me. I try to remember to select and copy some appropriate text from the page to act as title text. Copying the url into the note completes it.

Re: Take more screenshots (2022)

#47

So, if I write a script that takes screenshots of my desktop every minute or so, are there any tools out there I could use to “de-dupe” based on some arbitrary threshold of similarity to existing screenshots? I imagine it would be quite straightforward for identical screenshots, but what about stuff that’s just “mostly unchanged”?

A very low tech approach would be to create a video from the screenshots, and let the video codecs do this for you. Av1/x265 are quite mature in detecting differences between frames.

Re: Take more screenshots (2022)

#48
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never got in this habit, and I guess I'm old enough to only become aware that it is a habit recently. I do take screenshots while debugging or if I want to show someone something curious, and I'll take those pretty aggressively just in case (the files are small, hard drives are cheap). But I feel no compulsion here. Where does the drive to take so many screenshots come from?

For me probably in thinking I found something interesting that I could share with my friends, but eventually it developed into taking screenshots for even the most remotely interesting stuff, which no one really cares about but me.

I and many others can easily empathize if we look back at our phone camera libraries, full of mundane momentarily interesting images from our lives.

But what screenshots trigger that capture itch?

One thing I have (on my phone) are high score/achievement moments in games. Ironically, Threes game has its own internal hall of fame, and the UI is made up like a framed picture on a wall.

Re: Take more screenshots (2022)

#49

When I started making a game [0] last year, first thing I did was write a little Unity script that takes a screenshot of the opening scene, counts current lines of code using CLOC [1] (for fun, not as a true measure of anything), and occasionally renders it all out to an image file. With that I'm able to create some pretty fun time lapses of progress. I've been doing this at an arbitrary milestone, whenever my Luau […

Nice, love the time lapse gif!

Re: Take more screenshots (2022)

#50

Just record your entire session with OBS, set at 3fps. I can't count the number of times I've found it helpful to be able to check what I was doing X time units ago.

Do you keep that forever? How often do you need something from a 1/3 second time slice, vs, say 1s or 5s?
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