# Comparison

• Click the comp button in the bottom right of the toolbar.
• Untick I so only P and B are selected, or only select B if you want matching frame-types.
• Tick the public box to make the comparison available on the slow.pics homepage.
• Name the collection appropriately for Slow.pics, get the TMDB ID from https://www.themoviedb.org/ and paste it in the TMDB box, with it correctly set to Movie/TV depending on the content.
• Set the tag to the same name as listed on TMDB.
• Set "Delete After" to your desired value, by default comps expire after 2 years of not being viewed.
• Under random enter a frame count amount, you should use a large number of images to make the comparison as effective as possible, ideally at least 40 since not all frames will be useful.
• Make sure your PNG compression is set to 0 (Max) under Settings -> Main*
• Hit Start Upload and patiently wait while VS-Preview collects the frames and uploads the comparison.

If you wish to upload to a slow.pics account for comp history and ability to edit comps, do the following:

• Make sure you're logged into slow.pics
• Open the developer menu, go to Application at the top, then Storage on the left, open Local Storage and select slow.pics. Copy the browserId.
• Still in the developer menu, go to Network, refresh the page to populate the list, select the slow.pics entry and scroll until you see SLPSESSION and copy the ID.
• Back in VS-Preview, go to settings, Comp, and paste the two IDs in the relevant boxes.

• Press Shift & Right Arrow keys to move forward a set amount of frames (configurable in playback section of the toolbar)
• Number keys to switch between video sources and compare quality.
• Press Control & Space keys to mark the frame numbers. (Configurable in cfg files)
• Aim to screenshot a variety of scenes, light/dark, low/high motion, etc.
• Try and match frame type when screenshotting, e.g. all sources on a B frame, single frame jump comes in handy for when they don't match (Arrow keys).
• If a source file does not have B frames for you to match, you should skip matching frame type entirely for that source. This is usually true for Crunchyroll WEB-DLs, which have no B frames.

• Once you are done marking frames, click the comp button in the bottom right of the toolbar.
• Tick the public box to make the comparison available on the slow.pics homepage.
• Name the collection appropriately for Slow.pics, get the TMDB ID from https://www.themoviedb.org/ and paste it in the TMDB box, with it correctly set to Movie/TV depending on the content.
• Set the tag to the same name as listed on TMDB.
• Set "Delete After" to your desired value, by default comps expire after 2 years of not being viewed.
• Under random you may specify an additional frame amount for VS-Preview to pick at random, recommended to help fill the comparison with more frames.
• Untick Current frame as you likely don't want that included.
• Make sure your PNG compression is set to 0 (Max) under Settings -> Main

If you wish to upload to a slow.pics account for comp history and the ability to edit comps do the following:

• Make sure you're logged into slow.pics
• Open the developer menu, go to Application at the top, then Storage on the left, open Local Storage and select slow.pics. Copy the browserId.
• Still in the developer menu, go to Network, refresh the page to populate the list, select the slow.pics entry and scroll until you see SLPSESSION and copy the ID.
• Back in VS-Preview, go to settings, Comp, and paste the two IDs in the relevant boxes.

• Jump through frames quickly

  In VS-Preview on the bottom bar select Playback, directly right of the playback keys set the 1 value to 120.

• Mark screenshots quicker by setting the mark frame button to enter

  Open %localappdata%\Programs\Python\Python311\Lib\site-packages\vspreview\toolbars\comp and edit toolbar.py

  • Line 552: Replace QKeyCombination(Qt.Modifier.CTRL, Qt.Key.Key_Space).toCombined(), self.add_current_frame_to_comp with (Qt.Key_Return), self.add_current_frame_to_comp

• Swap binds to save your pinky finger, so you no longer have to hold shift all the time

  Open %localappdata%\Programs\Python\Python311\Lib\site-packages\vspreview\toolbars\playback\ and edit toolbar.py

  • Select lines 180-187, delete them, and paste

  self.main.add_shortcut(QKeyCombination(Qt.SHIFT, Qt.Key.Key_Left), self.seek_to_prev_button.click)
  self.main.add_shortcut(QKeyCombination(Qt.SHIFT, Qt.Key.Key_Right), self.seek_to_next_button.click)
  self.main.add_shortcut(Qt.Key.Key_Left, self.seek_n_frames_b_button.click)
  self.main.add_shortcut(Qt.Key.Key_Right, self.seek_n_frames_f_button.click)

• Press Shift & Right Arrow keys to move forward a set amount of frames (configurable in playback section of the toolbar)
• Number keys to switch between video sources and compare quality.
• Press Shift & S keys to take and save screenshots. (Configurable in cfg files)
• Note: Make sure your PNG compression is enabled under Settings -> Main (0-50 depending on speed impact), or disabled (100) if you plan to compress with a tool such as Oxipng later
• Aim to screenshot a variety of scenes, light/dark, low/high motion, etc.
• Try and match frame type when screenshotting, e.g. all sources on a B frame, single frame jump comes in handy for when they don't match (Arrow keys).
• Note: If a source file does not have B frames for you to match, you should skip matching frame type entirely for that source. This is usually true for Crunchyroll WEB-DLs, which have no B frames.

• Use slow.pics friendly file naming, so you can drag all the images onto the site and have them automatically sorted, with comparison names intact.

  In VS-Preview on the bottom bar select Misc, and set file name template to {frame}_{index}_{Name}.

• Jump through frames quickly

  In VS-Preview on the bottom bar select Playback, directly right of the playback keys set the 1 value to 120.

• Take screenshots quicker by setting the save image button to enter

  Open %localappdata%\Programs\Python\Python311\Lib\site-packages\vspreview\toolbars\misc and edit toolbar.py

  • Line 166: Replace QKeyCombination(Qt.Modifier.SHIFT, Qt.Key.Key_S).toCombined(), self.save_frame_as_button.click with (Qt.Key_Return), self.save_frame_as_button.click.
  • If you can't spam fast enough, in vs-preview click settings and set PNG compression to a lower level (higher value).

• Swap binds to save your pinky finger, so you no longer have to hold shift all the time

  Open %localappdata%\Programs\Python\Python311\Lib\site-packages\vspreview\toolbars\playback\ and edit toolbar.py

  • Select lines 180-187, delete them, and paste the following, making sure the indentation of the lines match (using spaces).

  self.main.add_shortcut(QKeyCombination(Qt.SHIFT, Qt.Key.Key_Left), self.seek_to_prev_button.click)
  self.main.add_shortcut(QKeyCombination(Qt.SHIFT, Qt.Key.Key_Right), self.seek_to_next_button.click)
  self.main.add_shortcut(Qt.Key.Key_Left, self.seek_n_frames_b_button.click)
  self.main.add_shortcut(Qt.Key.Key_Right, self.seek_n_frames_f_button.click)

The Bolt-action method is best paired with some scripts to run after you've saved all the frames. The following scripts are generated by chatgpt as I cannot code 👍 Generally, I just run all 3 with a .bat file, or just the first 2 if I'm not uploading to ptpimg.

import os

def zero_pad_and_clean_file_names():
    current_directory = os.getcwd()
    for filename in os.listdir(current_directory):
        base_name, extension = os.path.splitext(filename)
        parts = base_name.split('_')

        if len(parts) > 2 and parts[0].isdigit():
            parts[0] = parts[0].zfill(5)
            parts[2] = parts[2].replace("b'", "").replace("'", "")
            new_filename = '_'.join(parts) + extension
            os.rename(os.path.join(current_directory, filename), os.path.join(current_directory, new_filename))

# Usage example
zero_pad_and_clean_file_names()

import os
import glob
import subprocess

folder_path = os.getcwd()  # Get the current working directory

os.chdir(folder_path)  # Change the working directory to the specified folder

image_files = glob.glob("*.png")  # Get a list of PNG files in the folder

processes = []

# Divide the image files into chunks of four
image_chunks = [image_files[i:i+4] for i in range(0, len(image_files), 4)]

for images in image_chunks:
    command = ["oxipng"] + images + ["-o", "1", "-s", "-a", "-t", "8"]
    process = subprocess.Popen(command)
    processes.append(process)

# Wait for all processes to finish
for process in processes:
    process.wait()

#!/usr/bin/python
#Windows wildcard support fork - use at your own peril
import sys
import requests
import os
import glob
argc=len(sys.argv)
noconf=0
debug=0
configfile=os.path.join(os.path.expanduser("~"), ".ptpimg.key")
if argc==1:
    print("""Usage: ptpimgup.py file1 file2 file3...
    Uploads images to ptpimg and spits out http urls of said images
    config file %s should contain api_key eg:
    01234567-89ab-cdef-0123-456789abcdef
    contact oddbondboris with bugs"""%(configfile))
    sys.exit()
try:
    configfile=os.path.expanduser(configfile)
    cfgfile=open(configfile,'r')
    apikey=cfgfile.read()[:36]
    if len(apikey.split("-")) != 5:
        print("bad api key %s, file should only contain the api key"%(apikey))
    else:
        if debug==1:
            print(apikey)
except:
    print("broken configi %s"%(configfile))
    raise
    sys.exit()
finally:
    try:
        cfgfile.close()
    except:
        pass
links=[]
if '*' in sys.argv[-1]:
    sys.argv[-1:] = glob.glob(sys.argv[-1])
for fname in sys.argv[1:]:
    #print fname
    try:
        curimg=open(os.path.expanduser(fname),'rb')
        r=requests.post("https://ptpimg.me/upload.php",files={('file-upload[0]',('lol.png',curimg, 'image/jpg'))},data={'api_key':apikey})
        if r.status_code==200:
            print("https://ptpimg.me/%s.%s"%(r.json()[0]['code'],r.json()[0]['ext']))
            links.append(("https://ptpimg.me/%s.%s"%(r.json()[0]['code'],r.json()[0]['ext']),fname))
        else:
            print("error uploading file %s http %s"%(fname,r.status_code))
    except IOError as e:
        print("error on file %s : %s"%(fname,e.strerror))
    finally:
        try:
            curimg.close()
        except:
            pass
for link in links:
    print("[img]%s[/img]"%(link[0]))
for link in links:
    print("%s %s"%(link))