Making of Gangnam Geek
Overview
In this blog, I would like to show you how I made the Gangnam Geek video. It is the result of expanding what I had worked on for my first entry to The Data Geek Challenge.
I have broken this blog down to three parts.
- Visual walkthrough of the process.
- DIY
- The geeky details…
Part 1 – Brief Walkthrough
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Convert video file to a sequence of pictures with a video editor:
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Convert sequence of pictures to a special container file using PNGtoCSV:
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Like the step above, convert the music file to a special container file using FrequencyDump:
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Create a dataset for Visual Intelligence, refresh the data, take a screenshot, and repeat:
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After this process, I ended up with a bunch of screenshots (6,000+) which I put together using a video editor in order to turn that into a stop motion animation.
Part 2 – Try It Yourself!
In this section, you can try it yourself! The programs I wrote to create these visualization were rather crude and far from straight forward to use. In my effort to make it more accessible to you, I have created a DIY package to demonstrate the steps I described in Part 1. The idea for the waveforms are the same, but I will save that for Part 3 for the sake of simplicity.
Requirements:
- Visual Intelligence
- Java Runtime Environment
- Movie Maker or some video editor capable of stop motion animation
- Download the DIY Package.
- Extract the zip file – be sure to retain all the folders that are included in the zip file! The extracted contents will look like this:
SAP Lego.mp4 is the video we would like to have Visual Intelligence play. This video will need to be converted to a sequence of black and white images before we can continue. There are no built in programs that will do this in Windows, so I converted it for you; the results of the conversion are in the SAP Lego folder.
- Create a Scatter Chart in Visual Intelligence using the Visual Intelligence Data Source.csv file as the dataset with the following Attributes and Measures:
- Double-click 1. Convert Images.bat. This will convert the pictures within the SAP Lego folder to a container file, named container.mcsv.
- Double-click 2. Capture Screenshots.bat and QUICKLY switch back to Visual Intelligence. Be patient, this process will take about ten minutes.
- After about ten minutes, you will see a bunch of screenshots of Visual Intelligence in the VI Screenshots folder.
- Start a new Movie Maker project.
- Import all the pictures in the VI Screenshots folder into Movie Maker.
- Set the duration of all images to 0.1. Hint: double-click an image, press Ctrl+A, then enter 0.10 in Duration.
- Press Play!
Otherwise, if I have not bored you to death yet, please continue to Part 3!
Part 3 – Geeky Side
For this project, I had to modify an existing piece of open source software and write two of my own. I whipped them out rather hastily for this project, so my apologies for the awful usability and possible bugs.
Program 1 – PNGtoCSV
I originally wrote PNGtoCSV for my first Data Geek entry. I have since modified it to convert multiple .png files at once to generate the animation for the music video.
Using PNGtoCSV.jar in Windows
- Place PNGtoCSV.jar file on your desktop.
- Open Command Prompt. Go to Start > All Programs > Accessories and select Command Prompt.
- In the Command Prompt, type: cd %HOMEPATH%\Desktop
- Press the Enter key.
- In the Command Prompt, type: java -jar PNGtoCSV.jar <input> <output>
<input> – This can be one .png file or a folder of .png files.
<output> – It will generate a .csv file if it is given a single picture. It will generate a .mcsv file, for use with SendControlRAndCaptureScreen, if given a folder of pictures.
- Press the Enter key.
Program 2 – FrequencyDump
Frequency Dump is a neat open source program that draws a real-time frequency spectrum while it plays an audio file. I made some modifications so that it would save the frequency spectrum information in the form of a text file.
The original project and source code can be found at their SourceForge page.
Using frequencydump.jar in Windows
- Place frequencydump.jar file on your desktop.
- Open Command Prompt. Go to Start > All Programs > Accessories and select Command Prompt.
- In the Command Prompt, type: cd %HOMEPATH%\Desktop
- Press the Enter key.
- In the Command Prompt, type: java -jar frequencydump.jar <mp3 file> <samples/second> <distribution> <output file>
Where:
<mp3 file> – Path and name of your music file.
<samples/second> – Number of spectrum samples per second. 15 samples/second is recommended.
<distribution> – This can be either LINEAR or LOG. LINEAR will distribute the frequency bands evenly. LOG will place more emphasis on the low frequency bars.
<output file> – Path and name of your output file, to be used with SendControlRAndCaptureScreen.
- Press the Enter key.
For example, if you had an mp3 named test.mp3 on your desktop and you would like to dump into a file called dump.fs, you would type the following in Command Prompt:
cd %HOMEPATH%\Desktop press enter
java -jar frequencydump.jar test.mp3 15 LOG dump.fs press enter
Program 3 – SendControlRAndCaptureScreen
The SendControlRAndCaptureScreen program does the following:
- Read file generated by the modified FrequencyDump program.
- Periodically update a CSV file for use with Visual Intelligence
- Send a Control+R keystroke to refresh Visual Intelligence
- Takes a screenshot
Creating sample data file for Visual Intelligence using SendControlRAndCaptureScreen.jar in Windows
- Place SendControlRAndCaptureScreen.jar on your desktop.
- Open Command Prompt. Go to Start > All Programs > Accessories and select Command Prompt.
- In the Command Prompt, type: cd %HOMEPATH%\Desktop
- Press the Enter key.
- In the Command Prompt, type java -jar SendControlRAndCaptureScreen.jar <input file> <outputfile> -count 1
Where:
<input file> – Path and name of the output file generated with the modified frequencydump.jar.
<output file> – Path and name of the data file for Visual Intelligence
- Press the Enter key.
For example, using the dump.fs generated using the modified frequencydump.jar above to create output.csv, type the following in Command Prompt:
cd %HOMEPATH%\Desktop press enter
java -jar SendControlRAndCaptureScreen.jar dump.fs output.csv -count 1 press enter
Thank You
Thanks for your interest and a big thank you to those organizing the Data Geek challenge!
It was my favorite submission: totally out-of-the-box! 😆
Exceptional work Brandon. You have taken analytics to a whole new level. The Hip Level!!
This looks great! Congratulations! 🙂
Can you please update the SAPMats links so that I can test it myself? All the links seem to be "deactivated" 😉
Thanks a lot
Brandon, you are awesome!!!
How is it that I am just seeing this now?!? This is great work Brandon, Definitely a lot different than anything I have seen to date, and yours is over a year-and-a-half old. I'd love to see what you can do know with Lumira.
Wow... Totally .. Out of box and exceptional !!! .. Great work Brandon 🙂
Thanks,
Jothi
Hello ...
Innovative Brain.. Keep it up... 🙂 Mr. Brandon.
May i know how you got this idea....!?
Regards
Subbarao M