The Colors of Motion
September 7, 2014 8:42 AM Subscribe
A site designed and developed by Charlie Clark exploring the use of color in movies.
Charlie Clark Design. Via @EdwardTufte
"HOW DOES IT WORK?
- A bash script runs ffmpeg to export frames from a video file.
- The frame rate of the exports depends on the length of the video.
- The bash script then calls a PHP script which extracts the average color from each frame.
- The results are spit out as a JSON file with the hex values in an array.
- The front-end runs on backbone, and presents the color data.
- Navigate the colors in a number of ways, and compare the color to each frame."
I hope he does Diva soon
Charlie Clark Design. Via @EdwardTufte
"HOW DOES IT WORK?
- A bash script runs ffmpeg to export frames from a video file.
- The frame rate of the exports depends on the length of the video.
- The bash script then calls a PHP script which extracts the average color from each frame.
- The results are spit out as a JSON file with the hex values in an array.
- The front-end runs on backbone, and presents the color data.
- Navigate the colors in a number of ways, and compare the color to each frame."
I hope he does Diva soon
*pffft* No analysis of Manhunter or The Last Of The Mohicans or basically ANY Michael Mann movie? FAIL
posted by hippybear at 9:09 AM on September 7, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by hippybear at 9:09 AM on September 7, 2014 [1 favorite]
Email him a suggestion! (I just submitted Diva, in fact)
posted by Devils Rancher at 9:41 AM on September 7, 2014
posted by Devils Rancher at 9:41 AM on September 7, 2014
Hint: On the first link, make sure to click on the down-pointing arrow head. Don't use your PageDown key.
posted by benito.strauss at 10:11 AM on September 7, 2014
posted by benito.strauss at 10:11 AM on September 7, 2014
The MovieBarCode Tumblr (previously) does the exact same thing, I think, but with a much denser sampling. I love how you can tell just how bright and colourful The Lego Movie is.
posted by narain at 10:18 AM on September 7, 2014 [4 favorites]
posted by narain at 10:18 AM on September 7, 2014 [4 favorites]
Ugh, Tron Legacy. There were a lot of reasons to hate that movie but the color palette was high on the list.
posted by octothorpe at 10:41 AM on September 7, 2014
posted by octothorpe at 10:41 AM on September 7, 2014
I kind of wish that it was easier to navigate particular frames/scenes in films rather than having to just click left or right. (Like maybe you could have a grid of 20-30 frames/images at a time and click through that?) It takes quite a while to get to a scene that you might want to see the palette too.
posted by lauratheexplorer at 12:13 PM on September 7, 2014
posted by lauratheexplorer at 12:13 PM on September 7, 2014
Each separate color strip within is a link to the frame that generated it, & you can scroll up or down & guesstimate at least where in the film you are. I was trying to guess where the wood chipper scene in Fargo was by the color of the strips.
posted by Devils Rancher at 12:53 PM on September 7, 2014
posted by Devils Rancher at 12:53 PM on September 7, 2014
I've seen several sites/projects trying to do this, but all of them are marred by being made by non-programmers, or at least non-computer vision programmers, and thus they have really, really dumb algorithms. The frame's average color? Of course everything's going to be a muddy brown. Even a movie so full of primary colors as Kill Bill Vol. 1 is mostly beige on this site, because taking the average color is a horrible, horrible way of figuring out what colors are actually in the frame.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 5:41 PM on September 7, 2014 [3 favorites]
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 5:41 PM on September 7, 2014 [3 favorites]
What would be a non-horrible way of figuring out what colours are actually in the frame?
posted by narain at 2:21 AM on September 8, 2014
posted by narain at 2:21 AM on September 8, 2014
Setting up "base" colors with a certain amount of variance allowed in them in one partciular channel, then sampling the colors in each particular frame and calculating what percentage of the frame fits within the acceptable range for each base color, then presenting only the info on the colors present. So instead of almost every film being a muddy brown you'd get maybe 18% 0021c8, 12% 0a28b0 etc. (let's assume the film in question is Kieslowski's Blue).
posted by johnofjack at 8:25 AM on September 8, 2014
posted by johnofjack at 8:25 AM on September 8, 2014
Probably first do edge/object detection, to detect hard edges between different surfaces in the frame. Allow a certain amount of variation internally in those objects, and average those. If the objects have large variations with no hard edges (say, a sunset), then register as the extremes of the colors. Pick a color or two for each object larger than so and so. Maybe also emphasize colors that are very different from colors you've already picked.
Something like that should get you, say, 4-6 colors that are dominant in a given frame. Perhaps also adjust back and forth a few frames to avoid frames with a a lot of motion blur or out of focus.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 10:37 AM on September 8, 2014
Something like that should get you, say, 4-6 colors that are dominant in a given frame. Perhaps also adjust back and forth a few frames to avoid frames with a a lot of motion blur or out of focus.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 10:37 AM on September 8, 2014
This reminds me of a color class I took as an undergraduate. Our professor, Tony May, asked us to do the same thing, but with music. Translate one song into a grid of flat colors. It was strangely difficult for me to even comprehend. Maybe he was curious of any of his students had Synesthesia.
posted by xtian at 3:06 PM on September 8, 2014
posted by xtian at 3:06 PM on September 8, 2014
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posted by subdee at 8:50 AM on September 7, 2014 [1 favorite]