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Creating "Safe" Video

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Rachel learned this from Dale in June 2008.

INTRO: Paintbrushizing is a process that turns the whole field or a selected field into a sort of an oil-painting version of itself; it removes enough details that you can't see participants' faces, but leaves pretty much everything else observable.  I think it's better than blurring, and it's far, far easier to do.

WHAT YOU NEED:  QuickTime Pro, Adobe Photoshop, and a QuickTime movie.  The first time you try this, use a movie just a few seconds long.

1.      EXPORT SOUND TRACK

In QuickTime, open your movie, then Export it to an AIFF file. (File/Export… then save it somewhere where you can find it later.)

2.      TURN MOVIE INTO IMAGES

In QuickTime, open your movie, then Export it to an image sequence.  (File/Export…, then in the “Save exported file as…” dialog box, make a New Folder to hold the images; give them a name and Save.  These will eventually be junk, so save them somewhere that you’ll remember to throw them away. NOTE: this could take a while, depending on the size of the movie)

3.      DECIDE WHAT YOU WANT TO DO TO YOUR MOVIE

In Photoshop, open an image from your image sequence, and mess around until you find what you like.  I like Filter/Artistic/Paint Daubs, with a brush size of 6 and a sharpness of 7; but look around.  Also consider cropping, brightening, rotating, etc.  Don’t save the result.  Instead, once you’ve decided what to do, write down the exact sequence of commands for doing it.  Something like this:  Open (which file), Filter/Artistic/Paint Daubs (with certain settings), Save, Close.  Don’t leave out Open and Close; they’re necessary.

4.      CREATE A PROGRAM TO AUTOMATICALLY MODIFY AN IMAGE

In Photoshop, you can write a little program, like a macro, but here it’s called an Action.  Show the Actions palette if it isn’t showing already (Window/Actions).  Note the little black triangle on the upper right: hold that down and you get the Actions palette menu.

In the Actions palette menu, choose New Action and give it a name.  Next choose Start Recording, and enact the whole exact sequence of commands you wrote down.  That is, open an image, apply the Paint Daubs command, check the brush size, say OK, save the image somewhere else, and close it.  When you’re done, choose Stop Recording from the menu.  (There are buttons for all these things in the palette, also.) 

5.      AUTOMATICALLY MODIFY ALL THE IMAGES IN YOUR SEQUENCE

Photoshop will apply a chosen action to a whole sequence (“batch”) of images automatically.  This takes a while, so get ready to go out to lunch.

In the File/Automate/Batch dialog box:

·         Select your action from the drop-down menu.

·         Choose the Source – the folder containing your image sequence.

·         Check “Override Action ‘Open’ Commands.”  (Otherwise it just opens the same single image over and over.)

·         Choose the Destination – A new folder for the modified images.  These will be trash soon, so put them somewhere that you’ll remember to throw them out.

·         Again, check “Override Action ‘Save As’ commands” or it’ll save as the same thing over and over.

·         The rest can be left as defaults.  OK!  Go to lunch!

6.      REASSEMBLE A MOVIE FROM THE MODIFIED IMAGES

In QuickTime, choose “Open Image Sequence” and select from your folder of modified images.  The normal frame rate is 25. (To find out what frame rate to use, open  your original video clip in Quicktime. Click on Window/ Show Movie inspector. The number next to FPS is the "frames per second" rate.)

7.      IMPORT THE SOUND TRACK

·         In QuickTime Player, choose File/Open File and select the audio file you want to import.

·         In the QuickTime Player window that opens, choose Edit/Select All to select the entire audio file, then choose Edit/Copy.

·         Now go back to the window that has your movie opened.. Make sure that the playhead is at the beginning of the movie. To add the audio to the whole movie, choose Edit/Add.

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