Overlay Cheat Code

 

For the creative types- and not creative types. Depending on the time of year, I can be both, 1 or none.

I see these cool pod casts or streams(what i'm gonna show you may not be the best....this, though you could maybe sneak it in, wouldn't work[smoothly] for anything live since there is a tiny bit of pre set up required) where some animated graphic all of a sudden comes to frame-

Emphasis on content. Maybe a cartoon "BANG" emphasizing an explosive moment.

 Or, a cheesy "Click like & subscribe"
I go off topic here about some YouTube stuff- skip to the next paragraph to maintain on topic...(Wonder what viewers of archived videos will think years down the road when there isn't anything of the sort. Maybe YouTube isn't a thing...remember AOL? Yahoo? barely.... "like & subscribe" What is this prompt that I am constantly told to do?"- off topic, but it'd be an interesting ability if, on the YouTube platform... or others... sections could be labelled and then once labelled, those sections can be interchanged- example; maybe a sponsor doesn't work out and now involved in some controversy...but your video has a 2 minute section promoting them when they were in good standing and a decent sponsor... now you are stuck with this video...otherwise you could just replace that section, or delete it completely by just editing the labelled sections- and say labelled sections are the same label? Then a batched edit could be done)\-

-OK way off topic!\

Anyways... Some kinda graphic/ animation emphasizing the moment.. exaggerating an action. A caption. Some descriptive text. Maybe introducing a guest or setting the scene by having the location written out. Or, framing the scene with an animate graphic.

Turn programs into overlays in Windows with Overlayer  https://sourceforge.net/projects/overlayer/ Official site: https://github.com/PsychedelicShayna/overlayer

A lightweight window management utility to help get the most out of your limited screen area, by (safely) giving you the tools to: add transparency to a window, force a window to be topmost/appear on top of all others, as well as shortcut toggle-able click-through, or "ghost widows", if you like, where all clicks pass right through it as if it weren't there.

For censoring sections of the screen https://sourceforge.net/projects/idrag/

Program Description: Overlay Boxes Application

The Overlay Boxes application is a customizable tool designed to create draggable overlay boxes on your desktop. The program provides a user-friendly interface that allows you to add, move, and remove these boxes easily.

There's software for that. Right? I'm sure there is( leave a comment if you know or use any). I haven't explored any- because, my solution has work well for me- I don't have to. But, 1 that comes to mind is ODB, which you can set up scenes with the graphics within 'em- just updating the visibility of each. 

The way I do it... have graphical overlays- mostly for creating animated text within short video/ gif clips. Nothing fancy- but, hence the title , it is a bit of a cheat code (just calling it that...there is no coding involved). 

How I make overlays(doesn't have to be in this order):

1. Have a video in which you want to emphasize something within it- 
1. I want to emphasize an LED is on
2. Find an animated graphic that falls inline with your idea
1. I just google whatever that would be followed by "gif"
2. "red sparkle gif" for example
1. Adding "transparent or "transparency" works wonders and I highly advise that something with a transparent background be used- makes for better results. Though, you can always use a separate graphics editor to remove things like backgrounds or areas of color.
3. Two options here with either or viable... 1st option: Save it, making sure it is saved as a gif and not webp, or other file format
1. You can't convert it after, since there will be no animation in that case...
2. 2nd option: Save the media URL... as in copy it, into a clipboard, or copy and paste the URL into a text application- anywhere really that you can recall this URL with ease
1. The 2nd option sometimes doesn't work- the url needs to be that of the media directly/ not of the page the source is on....
4. On the website SourceForge, locate and download a small application called "Overlay"
1. https://sourceforge.net/projects/overlayapp/
2. May require the download of the DotNet Framework...  http://www.microsoft.com/net
5. Open the Overlay application
6. Right click
7. Select the media file you saved/ created... or...
1. Or.. this is where those 2options above come to play... option 1 we just went over...  
2. Option 2; revisit the URL you've saved
3. Where the file name populates once selected, you can also, instead, paste the URL and click next- if the source alows, your file will be stored in a temp file on your computer and displayed as though saved previously and selected.
8. Right click on the image to bring up the options
   
1. These are pretty intuitive so I won't go into them,,,
2. Any 'white' space around your graphic has a tendency to become transparent once the option to ghost the image is selected and any transparency value under 100%
3. For the effect I am sharing to work, you want to set your graphic to a transparency value that is still visible and at most 99%

Depending on the ghosting option selected, you may not be able to click on the media to move it/ adjust it... for certain applications a click through feature is a welcome one...

 If you find yourself unable to retrieve your overlay. look no further than your Task Tray which will have the Overlay application logo for each overlay you have- right click on the icon which will give you the same menu options as if you clicked on the media directly before. Un ghost/ um pin your overlay to adjust it.

Kinda cumbersome but it does the trick and serves its purpose... This is a fairly long set of directions... but it isn't that much really- I just wanted to be thorough.

Another use case for this would be for the need of censoring sensitive content/ areas of your screen.

Oh, yeah, this, I am doing to create little short clips of video or gifs. So, I am using a screen recorder like ShareX or Screen2Gif- just like the gif in this(and many/ most of my other posts)