Stop motion software

[DIW35]

Thought I would have a go at some stop motion photography with my Canon 40D. Problem is I need software that will take the resulting stills and blend them in to a seamless motion video.

I have Pinnacle studio, but this treats all still images as just that - stills, and will insist on putting a transition between each image. Even if I reduce the transition time to the minimum value of 0:01, the effect of the transition is still noticeable in the final moving image.

Does anyone know of any software (preferably freeware, as this is just dabbling rather than something serious) that will treat each jpeg as a frame of a movie without inserting a transition between each frame?

ETA Technically what I am actually trying to do is time lapse photography, but from a series of still images, so the principles are the same.

Edited by DIW35 on Monday 8th June 17:58

[GetCarter]

I use 'Pro Show Gold' for timelapse. Last time I looked it was shareware with a 30 day free trial.

http://www.stevecarter.com/timelapse.htm

Edited by GetCarter on Monday 8th June 18:32

[DIW35]

That's interesting. I've got Pro Show somewhere, just not currently installed on the PC!

[edmellor]

I did some stop motion a while back, I just used Windows Movie Maker.

[GetCarter]

I tried WMM but the frame rate/amount of frames wasn't up to a 24 hour - might do for shorter/less frame rate though (at least you have it free to try!)

[edmellor]

GetCarter said:

I tried WMM but the frame rate/amount of frames wasn't up to a 24 hour - might do for shorter/less frame rate though (at least you have it free to try!)

I hadn't considered that, mine were only a couple of minutes long. Saying that wouldn't it be possible to put the shots together into say 30min segments then combine them?

[DIW35]

I also tried WMM but the minimum time for displaying a still image was .125s which gives a paltry frame rate of 8fps. Not quite up to what I am trying to achieve.

Have actually managed to find a freeware program called Monkey Jam. Am having a look at it now. So far it would appear to be able to do what I want. Fingers crossed.

[VxDuncan]

Bloody expensive slendge hammer to crack a simple nut, but for years I've used 3D Studio Max to create animations from separate images (using if I'm creating 3d animations i'll render to still images and combine later for flexability). You create an Image File List (a text file with a sequential list of file names and .ifl extension), then load it into max's post procesor, and render to an avi or similar. I've merged thousands of frames into 25/30fps animations this way. Quite involved though.

What about an animated gif? Are there limits on filesize / no of frames? Something simple like the animation studio that ships with paint shop pro (almost free for the older versions) would create a gif from separate frames.

[AndWhyNot]

DIW35 said:

I also tried WMM but the minimum time for displaying a still image was .125s which gives a paltry frame rate of 8fps. Not quite up to what I am trying to achieve.

I read somewhere there's a dodge around this, something like take your finished movie back into WMM and use the Accelerate function to increase frame rate... sorry if that's a bit vague but it wasn't the answer I was looking for at the time so I didn't pay much notice.

[ruddermode]

What software is being used to control the camera and take photos? (I've a fairly old 10D and I messed about 2-3 years ago with directly linking it to the PC, but it never really worked how I wanted it to as, IIRC, the communication rate with the computer was too slow.)

[DIW35]

There is software available that allows you to control the camera from the pc and capture images direct to a computer directory. However, I will be using Canon's remote release to trigger the camera to capture the frames I need, and will import them to the PC as normal photographic images. Saves on the amount of equipment I need to carry around, and I don't think my laptop battery would last long enough to cover the period I want to capture images over.

Edited by DIW35 on Tuesday 9th June 11:47

[GetCarter]

ruddermode said:

What software is being used to control the camera and take photos? (I've a fairly old 10D and I messed about 2-3 years ago with directly linking it to the PC, but it never really worked how I wanted it to as, IIRC, the communication rate with the computer was too slow.)

In the D2x you can set the camera to take multiple shots at timed intervals, so all I had to do was change the battery 12 hours through my 24 hour timelapse (and I wouldn't even have to do that in the D3).

[tog]

QuickTime will do this. Not sure if it's a Pro-version only (£20) feature or not.

[Tuna]

Virtualdub is free and will create a video from stills - it also has a whole load of filters so you can resize, crop, flip, adjust brightness, contrast and so on. I use it for timelapse photography and edit films together with Premier Elements.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5EEZnTOup8&fea...

This one has been filtered with some motion blur, but you get the idea.