Color Me Video - Video Wallpaper using colors

The Color Me Video Laboratory will guide you on how video overlay colors are found. It's a pretty simple technique that requires no real technical skills. In most cases, it does not require any software to download for most personal computers have all the tools installed at purchase.

Capturing video overlay colors

In the lab you will need the following instruments:

a personal computer with capability to capture a screen print or screenshot
imaging software (Microsoft Paint, Photoshop, Gimp, etc)
any of the players
a video graphics card installed into the personal computer's hardware
Note: Be sure that the media player's video overlay or video acceleration preferences are active.
Note: Most personal computers (definitely those running MSWindows operating systems) made today have video cards already installed.

Procedure

Play a DVD disc or video file using any of the players.
Press the screenprint + alt keys.
Open imaging software.
Paste the screen print in the imaging software.

After you copy and paste the screen print, you should see the video playing through the screenprinted image. The video may be a bit off center with what looks like an empty area, yet you will see the video playing. The empty area is the video overlay color.

Desktop Video using Hardware/Video Overlay Colors

Four popular media players have been reviewed using these methods. It was found that some media player cannot be minimize while using these methods. View the Color Me Video the Players page for more.

For Windows XP users:

Download a Color Me Video Theme from the Color Me Video Demos page.
Open the media player
Play video
Minimize the media player

For all non-Windows XP users:

Use your display properties to remove the desktop image.
Set your wallpaper background image to the video overlay color
Open the media player
Play video
Minimize the media player

If the video is not playing on the background as the wallpaper, there are a few reasons why this may be.

The medial player of choice does not support it.
Hardware overlay or video acceleration is not active.
The color display is not set to true colors.

To learn more, view the Color Me Video Blog.

Three ways to play

There are three ways to play videos using media players; DVD discs, video files, and streaming video.

In the lab it was found that for some players there are two video hardware overlay colors. The video overlay color for DVD video is not the same for videos played with popular video files (avi, mp4, wmv, etc). DVD video and video file video overlay colors also differ from media player to media player. It was also found that video overlay colors and streaming video overlay colors often times share the same color. For some media players, up to two ways to play videos may not be supported.

True Colors: 16+ Million Colors

The average home computer can display up to 16+ million colors. Video overlay colors may not work if the personal computer does not support true colors and a video graphics card.

The Color of Video

Just as any color, video overlay colors can be used across any interface where colors are changeable. From MSPaint to applications to web pages, video overlay colors can be used on any interface where colors are adaptable.

Video overlay colors can used using two color formats. These formats are:

RGB color format: rgb(r,g,b)
Hexadecimal color code: #rrggbb
Note: The shorthand, #rgb color combinations are restricted hexadecimal colors and cannot be substituted for #rrggbb combinations.

About Flash and QuickTime Software

Video overlay colors are found using media players. In the Laboratory, it was found that Color Me Video Techniques are incompatible with Quicktime for Microsoft XP and flash software. Do not try to use this on popular video sites like (YouTube, MetaCafe, etc) that use flash media or Quicktime software to display the video. Both of these media player software types filters the video content and disables this media player feature.

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