Written
by Mike Brent
I thought
it would be a good idea to put up a basic overview of the entire process
from a beginner’s perspective, so newbies can get a good idea of what
kind of software they’ll need and how to get started. This covers a few
of the Frequently Asked Questions that tend to show up on the board
regularly. The main focus of this article is on using a framegrabber
in conjunction with a DV camcorder or webcam, which is probably
the best/easiest way to get started in stopmotion. And I won’t be going
into great detail... you’ll find other sections of the Newbie Guide
that go into greater depth on some of these subjects... I’ll provide links
to them when applicable. First I'll diagram the basic process as a simple
visual guide, and then I'll elaborate in writing underneath:
1... Capture Frames using a framegrabber
2... Edit your footage and add any effects, titles, sound and music
using standard video editing software
3... compress using video compression software
4... post it online or output to video
Capture Frames
This can be done using many different kinds of cameras. I won't go into
detail here about all the aspects of different cameras. That's a very
in-depth issue, which is largely covered in Chapter
6: Choosing a Camera for Stop-motion. Suffice to say that
if you use a webcam or DV camcorder then you have the decided
advantage of using one of the powerful Framegrabber programs that
have revolutionized stopmotion in recent years. Of course you can still
do your animation on a film camera, or now you even have the brand new
option of using a Digital Still Camera to capture your frames in high
def, for even better quality than the standard broadcast resolution. But
in order to get Framegrabber functionality with either of those options,
it's necessary to rig up a little security cam looking through the viewfinder,
or you could go low-tech and just use a webcam alongside your main camera,
just so you can check your animation using onion skinning and frame
scrubbing. I'd like to mention here that for any beginner, by far
the easiest and best method of doing stopmotion would be with a webcam
or a DV (digital video) camcorder running through a framegrabber program.
Check Lionel Ivan Orozco's awesome StopMotionWorks site for two related
articles, How
to Record/Film Stopmo and Stopmo
Software (Framegrabbers). This article covers pretty much
the same territory as Lio's How-To writeup.
This seems like the right point to add this. Some framegrabber programs
have a rotoscoping function, which allows you to load pre-shot
video. You might for instance be making a film with a stopmo animated
creature interacting with live actors in a real location, or possibly
in a stopmotion miniature set. What you can do is first shoot your live
action sequences, carefully planned for adding in the creature animation,
and load the footage into your rotoscope window. It will show up as a
background image, and then you can set up your animation scene and see
your creature puppet as a transparent overlay against the live footage.
But let me state.... a framegrabber program will not do the compositing
for you (except for StopMotionMaker Plus)... it will only serve
as a valuable tool to allow you to set up and animate your puppet 'relating
to' the live actors, to get eyelines right and see when a spear seems
to be making contact with rubber skin etc. You then need to use some kind
of compositing software to actually composite the two pieces of footage
together. After Effects will do compositing, as well as several other
programs (which I don't know the name of). If you're a Mac user Stupendous
Software has some inexpensive plug-ins that will turn iMovie into a decent
compositor.
Also, if you're doing lip sync or shooting a music video where the puppets
need to move in relation to the music, standard operating procedure is
to first record either your dialogue or the music track, and then do the
animation afterwards to match up to it. Magpie Pro is a program designed
for creating exposure sheets (X sheets or Dope sheets) by breaking down
dialogue into a frame-by-frame progression, showing what vowel or consonant
sound is needed for each frame. You then use this information to create
an exposure sheet that directs your animation. Matching music isn't quite
as involved. You just need to use a program that will show you a music
track on a scale.... you can set it to whatever frame rate you want to
animate at (ex. 24 frames per second; standard film speed, or 29.97 fps,
which is NTSC video running speed). This will then show you where the
beats and the big sounds are in the music. Magpie Pro will do this, or
you can use any number of music programs, such as Cubase LE. You would
then use the information to make your X sheet.
Edit your footage
A framegrabber program is only for capturing your animation,
not for editing it. For that you need to use standard, good-old
editing software. Each computer platform has its own freebies available
that will do a great job.... for PC's there's Windows Movie Maker and
for Macs there's iMovie. If you don't already have this software pre-installed,
then you can go to either Microsoft or Apple and download it for free.
In even the simplest editing programs you can easily cut your scenes,
remove any bad frames, speed things up or slow them down, move scenes
around, add titles, sound
effects or music, and sometimes even special effects. And there are plug-in
programs that can really maximize your editing software's capabilities,
for instance Stupendous
Software can turn iMovie into what I call a "poor-man's
After Effects". I'm a Mac user, and I apologize for my lack of knowledge
in the PC arena, but (and this is some of the most important newbie information
you can ever possibly learn!) you can always search the web for
relevant information and websites. Learning how to use a search
engine is one of the greatest skills you can possess in any field. The
internet brings all the world's knowledge right to your fingertips, and
the only limiting factor is your own diligence and search-engine skills.
For example, a Google search for Editor will dig up loads of info
about people who edit stories, while free DV editor will show you
exactly what you're looking for. Another great use of a search engine
is to find online tutorials. Example; iMovie editing tutorial or
bluescreen compositing tutorial.
There are also higher-end, more expensive editing and effects programs
that will do a much better job, and generally require extensive training
(can be self-taught through studying manuals and experimenting). After
Effects is a popular (but not cheap or easy program for adding all kinds
of special effects.
Compress
When you finish editing and adding titles etc, you'll end up with a huge
uncompressed video file, several hundred megabytes. This is too big for
posting on a website, or even to play smoothly on your computer. You need
to compress it, to different degrees depending on what your final target
is. If you're creating a DVD you'd need to use DVD Authoring software
and actually lay out the menu and the chapters(if any... generally a short
film doesn't use chapters) and the software will do the compression in
Mpeg-2. For a VCD (video CD) you need to compress it to under 700 megs,
and for posting on a website the idea is to get it as small as possible
so people don't have to wait all day to download it. Quicktime Pro is
a good compressor, and puts out .MOV files that are compatible with both
PCs and Macs, and don't require special software to watch (such as Real
player or an Xvid codec). Most people won't go download software just
to watch one movie, and it's important that they not encounter any problems
trying to watch your film, or most likely they'll just give up and you'll
never hear from them. That's why we at StopMoShorts settled on using Sorensen
3 for compression... it does a fantastic job of creating very small files
that look good - none of the annoying blockiness or weird shifting you
can get with some codecs (notably AVIs) and has universal cross-platform
compatibility. When I finish a film, even just a test, I'll always render
out a version compressed in either Sorensen3 or H.264 (proprietery Apple
Mac codec, won't work on PC's)just for viewing on my own computer, since
the uncompressed video will stutter and skip if you try to play it. For
this purpose I'll set the compression slider to it's highest setting,
making a file too big for posting on a website, but that still looks almost
uncompressed and will play smoothly.
Check out Jason Gottleib's Quicktime
Compression Tutorial and also there's Flicktips.
We had a couple more tutorials posted over at StopMoShorts, but the sites
seem to be down now, or the links are broken. At any rate, compression
is an essential skill, and you'd do well to do some web searching and
learn as much about it as you can if you plan on working with digital
video to any extent.
In addition to the compression itself, there are a few other tricks to
consider that can make video clips much easier for downloading. For one
thing, you don't need to have ten seconds of empty blackness before the
opening credits pop up, and the credits themselves should be abbreviated.
If your movie is going to be seen on a DVD or projected on a theater screen,
then there's no problem with this...but if people are waiting for a slow
dial-up modem to download it, then it's a nice gesture to edit things
down for their convenience. We often use just the first frame for a title,
since they'll be looking at it for a long time while it downloads, and
the last frame for credits, which will be displayed indefinitely when
the movie is over. Other things that can help reduce the download size
include reducing framerate. 15 FPS is a good speed, especially if you
shot on 2's... no need to show each frame twice when you can just show
them once and cut out the extras. Make the window smaller. 320X240 is
a decent size, half fullscreen, and still big enough to see everything
pretty well. Keep in mind that setting up video for online viewing is
always a compromise... you can't get it pristine and fullscreen and still
end up with a small filesize.