I notice some pages are added with pictures that aren't cropped. I know this isn't anything new but I wish these pages wouldn't be validated or the user adding the page could be notified about it. I think some users adding pages are so eager to finish or just lazy. It may not seem like a big deal to some but cropped pictures are much nicer to view and a more organized look. I know it takes extra time but it is a necessary step in my opinion.

Do you mean to cut away the black boarders that sometimes surround the picture?
Yes, that's a rule we have.

Or do you mean to cut out the car from the picture so it's the only thing seen on the new picture?
Well, I think it's "misleading" to do that, I have seen that some have used this technique to add a number of cars from the same picture or adding something that otherwise would have been considered too background. Also; it was decided a long time ago to not do that since we want the original captures in the database.

He is complaining about the black borders

No problem then

I know I have been guilty of this sometimes, leaving a little black border out of laziness. But it's so easy to batch crop a whole directory of files in XNview (free) there is really no excuse

It is only a big problem if it is a big border for me.

I did not know you could crop with XNView. I have been doing each photo individually with Snapfire(?). :d'oh:

I am concern about the complaint about cropping the border. I thought cropping the border is for the horizontal one, but some of my capture may have one side black border which it is few pixel wide thinking it is not too bad.

Even my bigger concern is that these captures I have made are stored as jpeg format and I have to edit the picture to cropped off the borders and save to same jpeg format, it could loose some of the picture quality. And that makes more work when I have capture more than 20 pictures to be use for upload. That takes a lot of work to make the quality finish with few pixel of vertical black border removed. Eventually I may want to test out the XNView program, but I have JASC Paint Shop pro 9 to work with for now. But, hey, if you wish me doing that, I'll do my best to honor your wish.

Perhaps the original TV shows were like that were capture into the DVD knowing it would not show up at the television tube. But, when you do the software capture, it really shows up all the signals into the frame. I prefer to keep the capture as original as possible in TV 4:3 ratio captures. I can do with exception of widescreen capture that I can crop these horziontal borders without problem.

Comments/Rebuttal?

There is indeed a quality loss if you do changes to a jpeg picture. So if the border is really thin and the image already jpeg, it is better to keep it if the picture.
Of course it is better to remove it before saving to jpeg, but for contributions already received we can't do much except asking to be more careful next time.
It is good to avoid even thin borders, since (as I explained elsewhere) due to jpeg algorithm the quality of the image is bad near sharp lines. So a thin black border produces artifacts in the zones around that border.
Horizontal or vertical, that does not change: borders should be removed

The problem is that I have Microsoft Media Player 9 that it saves as jpeg format when I capture a image

It does not offer other formats in the file name selection window? (or does it directly save the file without prompting?)

How do you use xnview to crop the black borders from a bunch of captures? I need to be able crop vertical borders at the sides as well.

in addition of what is said on see http://forum.imcdb.org/forum_topic-1201-How_you_can_submit_pictures.html
in "transformation" tab double click on "crop" and enter position of the rectangle to keep in the picture

I checked the Microsoft Windows Media Player 9 today and found that it can save both jpeg and Microsoft bmp

I can use the bmp for the editing to crop the horizontal borders if I have to capture the wide format movie.

Well I know how to do it but pic per pic. What I have to do if I want crop black borders from a bunch of pics?

For instance: This picture is 720 x 576


Without black borders the picture would be 689 x 267


Using Xnview I can mark the rectangle I want to leave

and later I cut and I save the picture.

But if I want to do the same with a bunch, after I have added the pictures I want to crop, this window says 4 parameters I must write.


I suppose I should write 698 (for length) and 267 (for width) but, how can I know the parametres of X and Y to leave the rectangle I want to capture for several pictures? Must I do something more?

When you select the rectangle to keep on the picture on your 3rd pic, see the status bar at the bottom: at the end you have the size of the rectangle followed by the position.
In your example, "687x266 (14 169)"
These numbers are "width x height (X Y)"

Perfect!!

The only time I deliberatley leave black borders on anything is if they're part of a movie/tv show/music video itself.

Thanks, this really helps a lot. But there's one more thing I'd like to know.. maybe a bit of a stupid question, but how do you get rid of that "do you want to replace the picture"-thing that comes up each time you batch process pictures? I'm tired of having to hold down the enter-button and listening to "donk-donk-donk-donk...".

In XNView?

On the general section of the Batch Processing form there is a field marked overwrite. Select 'Replace' in that.

What I do is create a new sub-folder using XnView

1.- Open XnView and click on Conversion (I suppose it will be the same on English)


2.- Click where red arrow shows and a new window will be opened showing the way you have your folders on your PC




3.- Choose the folder of the movie you want resize/crop and click at the lower on left: Create new folder (or similar)


4.- Later add the pictures you want resize/crop


5.- And finally go the 'Transform flap' (or similar) where you choose to crop or to resize


When you finish the resized/cropped pictures will go to the new folder (it's a way to save the first pics you got because if you do a mistake pictures can be left in bad quality). If they are OK, then you can delete the first you got.