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Psycho Knight posted:Words of helpfulness I'm glad to hear it's not too wordy. The gifs went through some rigorous trimming and compression that let me get them just under the max that LPix would take, but I don't imagine I'll be throwing out more than 1-3 per update anyways. I've tried to figure out what to do with the screenshots, but I know the LPArchive won't take images over 900 pixels in width and the PSP native resolution width of 480 makes the easy solution of doubling impossible there. I've tried a few experiments, but there comes a whole lot of tradeoffs with it. It looks reasonable with 50% resize to 720x408, but I'll have to throw a bilinear filter on it, as well as finding new homes for the gifs to be hosted. The .jpg compression starts to get very visible to me, but perhaps I'm just too much a stickler for pixel perfection. Here's the original: https://lpix.org/3562405/capture_077_15.jpg And here's the resize test: https://lpix.org/3563963/Resize_Test.jpg I don't have every portrait done yet. I could take my old file and run through all the cutscenes again and pick out the character's faces from there, but I'm just making them as they show up. I've got some of the software for ripping from PSP isos (a script for QuickBMS, really), but I couldn't locate anything on the file types that VC2 uses. I'm pretty sure that ODIF_BA_FACE0020.HTX is a likely place for a portrait to be stored, but I lack knowledge on how to interpret the data. I'm pretty sure the portraits are sectioned as many eye and mouth pieces are re-used between portraits, but I could be wrong. All I know is that VC1 stored stuff on some pretty obscure file formats. It's music was in a file format typically used for sports games, I think.  Psycho Knight posted:Also I hate VC2. I mean, I get it. He's not the worst main character I've dealt with, but he's seriously a jerk sometimes. The Flying Twybil fucked around with this message at 02:00 on Oct 22, 2019 |
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Oct 22, 2019 01:21
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Especially Avan.
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The Flying Twybil posted:I'm glad to hear it's not too wordy. The gifs went through some rigorous trimming and compression that let me get them just under the max that LPix would take, but I don't imagine I'll be throwing out more than 1-3 per update anyways. Personally, I like the resized version better as it gives a better view of the gameplay while keeping the text readable, but I understand that it messes with the gifs. Going with a hybrid approach would probably not get a good reaction, since the gifs would be so much smaller than the main screenshots. Yeah, that sounds the like file you are looking for, or at least one of them. Editing out the actual assets you want is a pain though. Sometimes you get lucky and everything is there in a common format, like BMP, but VC2 doesn't seem to be one of those times. I found the assets for VC3, which is weird considering that game never got an (official) localization, but there is nothing for 2. Like I said, I'll take a look if I can. Chances are you will be too far into the LP by the time that happens though. Avan can't be the worst protagonist, because Leonard from WKC exists. Leonard sets the bar so low that it's basically underground. It takes very little to clear the "Worst Protagonist" hurdle. That being said, Avan is still terrible.
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Oct 22, 2019 12:18
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Don't capture jpgs, grab lossless images (png, bmp, whatever). Your best bet is probably to play at a higher resolution and downsize as needed rather than starting small and upsizing. I don't know how your emulator handles screenshots but you can always use an external capturing program like fraps if it doesn't provide good settings.
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Oct 22, 2019 12:45
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vilkacis posted:Don't capture jpgs, grab lossless images (png, bmp, whatever). Your best bet is probably to play at a higher resolution and downsize as needed rather than starting small and upsizing. I took your advice and tested it the other way around and I think the answer's pretty obvious to me now: New Resize Test: https://lpix.org/3564738/Resize_Test_Best.jpg Old Resize Test: https://lpix.org/3563963/Resize_Test.jpg For that I recorded at double resolution on the emulator, screencapped the video with IrfanView, resized the screen by 75%, and then saving into .jpg to save data space. Irfan can batch convert to do those last steps all in one, so I'm not worried about that anymore. It's a hell of a lot cleaner now. I think I had got caught up recording at the minimal resolution mostly because I was trying to maintain pixel perfection in the recording so I could hand-cut the portraits. I can get those after the fact anyhow, so recording at double size won't be much of a bother. I won't have the ability to test resizing the gifs until later tonight, but something's telling me that I don't think I'll manage to get them anywhere within LPix's 2MB limit. Psycho Knight posted:Advice! Sounds good to me! Even if I do end up too far in, thanks anyways! Psycho Knight posted:Avan can't be the worst protagonist, because Leonard from WKC exists. ...You got me there. I'd almost forgotten about that walking disaster. 
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Oct 22, 2019 16:01
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TheMcD posted:Hey, I went back and edited the first episode down a bit to reduce the amount of dialogue / subtitles crossover, and made a second episode with that feedback in mind. Also, I made some pictures for the videos. Could somebody take a look and see if this improved things somewhat, or if there's still something I should work on? It seems like the second episode has a fairly low amount of commentary, but maybe that'll just be the way it is. Thanks, it's easier to follow and it didn't feel like too much was missing. It felt fine with the level of commentary, IMO. I assume there will be more time for commentary once the tutorials are over anyway. I'd say good to go, and looking forward to it.
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Oct 22, 2019 20:25
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klafbang posted:Thanks, it's easier to follow and it didn't feel like too much was missing. It felt fine with the level of commentary, IMO. I assume there will be more time for commentary once the tutorials are over anyway. I'd say good to go, and looking forward to it. Well, it's drat good that you think I'm good to go, because I just now went live with the thread. Would've been quite awkward if there still was stuff to fix. Thanks for the feedback!
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Oct 22, 2019 20:32
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Have you tried reducing the amount of colours? It won't be as pretty, of course, but going from 256 to 128 colours can save a noticeable amount of space without looking too much worse. But you can go even lower if you absolutely have to. Another option is to turn of dithering - which, again, will not be as pretty, you'll get "bands" of colour rather than smooth gradients, but it tends to lower the file size a lot. (e: with the above, you need to make new gifs with these settings from the start, not edit the existing ones.) And yet another is to crop them, if you have parts that aren't necessary, like stat windows and such. This saves space while retaining the action. And of course you can just keep the gifs smaller, even if it doesn't result in a nice even column of images. vilkacis fucked around with this message at 05:52 on Oct 23, 2019 |
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Oct 23, 2019 05:49
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vilkacis posted:Help with gifs I believe I've tried reducing colors to 128 before and it hardly had any effect visually or file size, but I'll give it another shot. Dithering I haven't tried, but I'll try that as well alongside some cropping. The main thing is for me to get their size down to a little bit less than 4MB. I can easily halve their file size with some compression. In the meantime, I'll work on recapturing all the screenshots so I can replace the old ones. It shouldn't be too hard. I can re-use the videos I have for now and with a little wrestling I can get them to look fine enough, so I can go about it the better way once the second update is released. Thanks for all the help so far, by the way!
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Oct 23, 2019 15:50
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Looking for opinions - I've done a bunch of board game threads in the Trad Games forum over the years, but it'd be nice to do some where there's more traffic and include some strategy talk and spectator chat in them. Trouble is that I don't think they're really Let's Plays - they're not communal, I pick 4-6 players from a signup. They might not exactly show off a given game depending on what the players do, and it might be unfair of me to go 'boy that play sure was risky' and talk through the strategy of it mid-thread. Am I worrying too much / should I just go 'gently caress it'? Or would it be better to play the game beforehand, lose out on audience participation a little and present the game like the Dom4 threads?
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Oct 24, 2019 04:40
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LPs don't have to have lots of reader input to be good; plenty of them are more "me and my friends are gonna play this game and shoot the poo poo while we do it, feel free to watch and chat in the thread." There've also been board games done as LPs in the past. The first that comes to mind was an LP of Risk, and there was another of Risk Legacy. Whether you do strategic commentary during the game or save it for after is up to you, but the audience will almost certainly be drawing their own judgements immediately after each turn is posted.
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Oct 24, 2019 05:21
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I still think the goon rock paper scissors thread in LP was one of the best LPs we've ever seen. It was epic. And there's also been LPs of CYOA game books. Board games are fiiiine.
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Oct 24, 2019 06:55
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Alright, folks, I think one last check-in is in order. I've resized everything, modified the formatting just a little and I've come up with these three test-posts. Here's the OP again, just for reference: https://lpix.org/sslptest/index.php?id=155294 Here's Update 1: https://lpix.org/sslptest/index.php?id=155285 And here's Update 2: https://lpix.org/sslptest/index.php?id=155321 I followed Vilkacis's advice on cropping the gifs, and I've gotten everything else also resized up by 50%. The quality of the images aren't perfect, that's already been remedied with Update 3 and the coming bonus update. New, expect for later quality: https://lpix.org/3564738/Resize_Test_Best.jpg Old quality used in these two updates: http://lpix.org/3566073/capture_062_23.jpg I'm ready to get this trainwreck on rails, just looking to make sure everything's looking fine before I set it in motion! e: Went ahead and posted that thing up. If there's anything in need of fixin', I'll get it done as the LP goes on. The Flying Twybil fucked around with this message at 22:43 on Oct 25, 2019 |
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Oct 25, 2019 02:01
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I wanted to test out the first video of golf. I had to lead in with a solo commentary intro which I'm curious if it holds interest long enough to make it through the first minute to when we start loving around. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VajLZuS7EKw&feature=youtu.be
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Oct 25, 2019 02:43
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Honestly not sure if this goes here or tech support, but it strikes me more as general advice than tech, so I'm posting it here; lemme know if I should go post it there instead. How do people host audio for SSLPs now that Tindeck is dead? Sure, linking to YouTube videos of the soundtrack seems like a good solution, but what if you want to say, do an LP in which you link not only to major music tracks, but to really minor things all the way down to and including sound effects? Is such a thing a pipe dream now that Tindeck is dead? I guess unlisted YouTube videos could work, so long as YouTube doesn't care if you upload a hundred 4 second videos to your channel? See, awhile back I did some SSLPs of the Corpse Party series, which is a horror series that does not remotely lend itself to full video, but the sound design is very important with a lot of sound effects that greatly enhance the atmosphere and improve the experience as a whole. In the future I'm interested in finishing out that series, but Tindeck is down now. They're not necessarily mandatory for an LP, but I would like to include them if there's a logical way to do it that doesn't involve hosting them myself because honestly most readers didn't click all of them based on the Tindeck stats at the time and it wouldn't be worth the bandwidth cost.
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Oct 25, 2019 08:59
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Hamsterlady posted:Honestly not sure if this goes here or tech support, but it strikes me more as general advice than tech, so I'm posting it here; lemme know if I should go post it there instead. Clyp is fairly good for small-scale incidental stuff like that. You get 6 hours of audio upload time with a free membership, unlimited if you pay for it. (Don't pay for it, it's like $100 a year for basic premium membership) nine-gear crow fucked around with this message at 09:08 on Oct 25, 2019 |
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Oct 25, 2019 09:06
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Oh, that sounds great. Thank you! Six hours should be more than enough for a ton of 3-10 second clips. I actually paid for Tindeck, but that was a one-time fee and was like, $20 or something.
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Oct 25, 2019 11:03
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LPix also supports mp3s, IIRC. They just shouldn't be too big.
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Oct 25, 2019 11:42
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klafbang posted:LPix also supports mp3s, IIRC. They just shouldn't be too big. I dimly recall the limit is 2 or 3 MB, which should get you a couple minutes' worth of music or so. More than sufficient for sound effects.
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Oct 25, 2019 18:58
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GrandmaParty posted:I wanted to test out the first video of golf. I had to lead in with a solo commentary intro which I'm curious if it holds interest long enough to make it through the first minute to when we start loving around. I haven't watched it yet because this video is unwatchable, therefore you should post it.
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Oct 25, 2019 22:18
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Is anyone doing an LP of Ciconia No Naku Kori Ni yet? cuz if not then I really want to start one up.
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Oct 29, 2019 23:19
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Mr. Steak posted:Is anyone doing an LP of Ciconia No Naku Kori Ni yet? cuz if not then I really want to start one up. I have the first half dozen posts of one ready to fire at any moment.
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Oct 30, 2019 00:52
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ProfessorProf posted:I have the first half dozen posts of one ready to fire at any moment. oh you should absolutely do it rather than me! i would just very much like an LP thread to exist for the game.
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Oct 30, 2019 01:26
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Mr. Steak posted:Is anyone doing an LP of Ciconia No Naku Kori Ni yet? cuz if not then I really want to start one up. I mean, you could do one too. There's no rule against it. It happens sometimes that there are multiple concurrent LPs of the same game. I mean, we had two YIIK LPs running not too long ago.
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Oct 30, 2019 01:41
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Soo I did a SSLP testpost with LPIX and my img embedded links are not appearing, if i try to preview them here on the forums it works though. Is it because they are above 900 pixels width? Or do special characters like % and [ break it? Cause Media player classic saved them in this format. I know its suboptimal and Im gonna try to use VLC again for this to save them in png etc.
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Nov 4, 2019 19:06
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Yes it's the [] characters, the test poster bbcode processing is pretty simple. lpix ignores the filename in the URL so you can just drop those characters. Also side note your JPGs are loving massive. This:  is 400kb and this:  is 140kb but looks pretty much identical.
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Nov 4, 2019 19:21
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I blame Media player classic, it's forcing JPG on me. Whats the recommended player to grab screenshots from videos? VLC?
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Nov 4, 2019 19:28
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media player classic can also save to PNG, but either way you need to recompress to JPG with a decent quality setting. Don't upload PNGs to lpix either for this game as that would be massively wasteful.
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Nov 4, 2019 19:57
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I got it. I grabbed Irfanview and batch resized/renamed the jpgs, they now average around the 105kb mark. Just gonna have to update all the links, thanks for the feedback.
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Nov 4, 2019 19:58
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Updated my test post for Kenshi. https://lpix.org/sslptest/index.php?id=155367 Since this my fist attempt at a screenshot LP let me know if this is enough content for a first update. For a real thread I would make a introductory post about the game, what it's about ( A squad based sandbox RPG) and explain the main focus of the LP and the goals / factions etc. This is basically just a sanity check if everything is okay so far. Is it too much text? Too little screenshots? Quality fine? etc. edit: I also have to mention English isn't my native language, so if anything I wrote is super off let me know too. FrickenMoron fucked around with this message at 20:38 on Nov 4, 2019 |
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Nov 4, 2019 20:33
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FrickenMoron posted:Updated my test post for Kenshi. https://lpix.org/sslptest/index.php?id=155367 Since this my fist attempt at a screenshot LP let me know if this is enough content for a first update. For a real thread I would make a introductory post about the game, what it's about ( A squad based sandbox RPG) and explain the main focus of the LP and the goals / factions etc. This is basically just a sanity check if everything is okay so far. Is it too much text? Too little screenshots? Quality fine? etc. Everything looks good to me! Your English is fine and it's well paced.
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Nov 5, 2019 14:28
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The Flying Twybil posted:Everything looks good to me! Your English is fine and it's well paced. Thanks! I wrote up my introduction post for the game as well now, it can be found here: https://lpix.org/sslptest/index.php?id=155370 I hope its enough info intially for someone who's not familiar with the game.
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Nov 5, 2019 16:06
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FrickenMoron posted:Thanks! I wrote up my introduction post for the game as well now, it can be found here: https://lpix.org/sslptest/index.php?id=155370 Looks good enough to me as well!
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Nov 5, 2019 18:37
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What's the archival process for megathreads? Do you request as you finish games, or finish the whole thread and then send it along?
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Nov 8, 2019 07:48
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Hamsterlady posted:What's the archival process for megathreads? Do you request as you finish games, or finish the whole thread and then send it along? That depends on you preference, I think. If you want each individual game to have their own separate entry on the archive then you can do it on an ad hoc basis and just send baldurk the relevant post links and something that will serve as an OP for each individual game. Otherwise if you want it to be all one entry then wait till the whole megathread is finished and submit it in its entirety, again with an easily navigateable OP. This is assuming they’re all your LPs and it wasn’t a collaborative Megathread, in which case it’s usually up to each individual contributor to the tread to submit their own stuff for archival, like several people who’ve posted full LPs in the Casual Thread have got their stuff archived despite the Casual Thread being collective dumping ground for stuff that’s open to anyone to post in.
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Nov 8, 2019 07:59
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Gotcha. Thank you! They're all mine and I'd prefer separate entries, so I guess I'll toss Baldurk the links as I finish them.
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Nov 8, 2019 08:23
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Hello all. I'm planning to run an SSLP of Avernum 5. Here's what part of a post might look like: https://lpix.org/sslptest/index.php?id=155448 Of course, I will have an introduction explaining the game and its mechanics. I just want to hear any advice about the images, the writing, etc. Thanks!
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Nov 23, 2019 05:36
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There's hardly anything to that post, so it's hard to give feedback. I mean, what's there seems basically fine?
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Nov 23, 2019 05:52
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I've been slowboating resizing images to be archived, is there a faster way to check the dimensions of images that isn't me manually going to each one and checking the details? Also for the archive you only have to worry about not going past 900 wide, but height doesn't have a limit, right?
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Nov 25, 2019 19:25
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Leal posted:I've been slowboating resizing images to be archived, is there a faster way to check the dimensions of images that isn't me manually going to each one and checking the details? Also for the archive you only have to worry about not going past 900 wide, but height doesn't have a limit, right? Yes, 900 px with is the only limitation. You should also try to keep the filesize reasonable, of course. You shouldn't really worry about checking the dimensions of each image. Just run them all through a batch resize in IrfanView. In the advanced settings, you can check "Don't enlarge smaller images" that way everything larger than 900 px wide will be scaled down, everything smaller will be left as is. Also, don't forget to turn off resampling for pixely games.
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Nov 25, 2019 19:33
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Leal posted:I've been slowboating resizing images to be archived, is there a faster way to check the dimensions of images that isn't me manually going to each one and checking the details? Also for the archive you only have to worry about not going past 900 wide, but height doesn't have a limit, right? If all your images are the same size or are going to end up the same size when it's all done Irfranview has a Batch Convert option that lets you feed it a raw mass of images and it will automatically resize them all to a specified amount. Its one of the many things the feature does and it can blast through up to 100 images in seconds.
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Nov 25, 2019 20:06
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