questions about vidding comics

[ghost_lingering]

People who vid comics! I'm trying to figure out some source acquisition/workflow stuff and I have questions.

The comic I'm looking to vid is Saga, which is an Image Comics title. Image sells DRM free downloads, which is what I'm leaning towards using for the vid, but they have different formats available and I'm not sure which would be best for vidding purposes: PDF, ePub, & CBR/CBZ. Any recommendations? Are there any reasons why I should not use their digital files for vidding purposes and use scans instead?

I'm going to be using Adobe programs for this and the first stop will be prepping the images in Photoshop. If I go with PDFs the workflow is fairly straightforward, but I'm not as familiar with ePub or CBR/CBZ files. What would I need to do to prep/transcode those files if those are the best options?

(Also, not sure how I should tag this -- Tech: clipping? A new tag?)

Comments

[absolutedestiny]

cbr/cbz files are just zipped folders of images (either png or jpg), so you would be able to easily extract the files using a program like 7zip.

As for whether that's better than PDF depends on the image compression of either.

When you buy do you have to choose the format?

[P.S. Saga is amazing; I approve]

[ghost_lingering]

Ahhh, good to know! I don't do digital comics so I was thinking cbr/cbz files would take more wrangling.

I think you can download multiple file types. Some Image titles are available through their site directly and I'm not sure about those, but for the titles on comixology it looks like you can download in whatever formats are available. (Saga falls into the later camp.)

Saga is amazing! We'll see how this vid works out.

[undomielregina]

You can literally just rename the files to .zip or .rar and open them as normal. It's super easy (I go the other way to read manga in comics reading programs, so I can guarantee that it works.) It will definitely be the easiest way, assuming the digital version has a high enough resolution for your purposes. If it doesn't, you'll be better off scanning or finding scans to download, since those tend to have very large images.

[ghost_lingering]

So much easier than I had thought! Comixology's downloads are HD, so they should be sufficient, I think. I'm going to do some tests with the first volume over the next week. Worst comes to worst I can cut up my trades to scan, but I don't think it will come to that.

[sholio]

I'm afraid I can't help with the technical question, but I just wanted to register my enthusiastic and delighted approval for the whole idea of a SAGA VID! \o/

[ghost_lingering]

\o/ I am not giving myself any kind of deadline on this, so don't hold your breath, but Saga begs to be vidded!

[chaila]

.cbr = a .rar file of each comics page as a separate .jpeg, .cbz = a .zip file of each comics page as a separate .jpeg. If you unzip a .cbr or .cbz file, you should get a folder including each page as a separate image file. I never tried to mess with scans, so I can't speak to that! But unzipping to individual .jpegs and then manipulating the images from there in an image editor (and then importing those edited images into my vidding program) totally worked for me, and required no converting etc.

Good luck!

[ghost_lingering]

cbr/cbz are much more straightforward than I had thought it seems! I can totally handle jpegs. Thank you!

[par_avion]

Woo, Saga vid!

I'm open to adding more tags if you come up with one you like.

[ghost_lingering]

Someday a Saga vid! Someday!

Re: tagging ... Tech: Still Image maybe? I'm not really sure what this fits as.