image resolution for stop motion animation

[Jeff Carpenter]

You’ll get slighty better results starting with a high resolution and converting down to the final size. This is nearly always true which is why TV shows are often shot on film even though the resolution is much higher than any HDTV. It’s because the higher level you start out at the better off it will look in the end.

But even more than that, shooting with a high number of pixels will give you the opportunity to crop. I can tell that’s what they do on the TV show “Robot Chicken.” They edit everything at full frame, then at the end they convert it to one large video clip and do zooms and pans on the video, simulating a camera. Because they have more pixels than they need, everything stays sharp. They couldn’t do that if they shot at the same resolution they wanted to finish at.

Search YouTube for the clip called “Voltron Gets Served” and take a look at that. Every time there’s a “camera move” on the monster or the robot it’s done after it’s edited. You might not want to do something like that right now, but it’s probably best to have the option open to you later if you change your mind. It’s always good to leave your options open.

Plus, you’re using 720×480 video now. What if someone sees your work and wants to turn it into a web video? They could make a flash animation from your work at a much higher resolution than that if they want. Or maybe 5 years from now you’ll be making some sort of HD video of your past work. You’ll be glad you can make your project look its best at that point because you shot and edited at something higher than DV. Do the best you can now and save that. Then downconvert it to DV for now. You’ll probably be happy that you did in the future.

[Scooter88]

Thanks a lot Jeff. That makes a lot of sense and your probably right, in the future i’ll be glad i went high res.

[Bret Williams]

[Jeff Carpenter] “You’ll get slighty better results starting with a high resolution and converting down to the final size. This is nearly always true which is why TV shows are often shot on film even though the resolution is much higher than any HDTV. It’s because the higher level you start out at the better off it will look in the end.”

Shooting on film is not because it’s a higher resolution but because the exposure latitude is much better. Over and under exposure are less of a worry as well. Not enough room here ot explain exposure latitude, but it has much more to do with the look of film than frame rate.

For this very reason you’d actually have better looking results by shooting on film and converting to video via scanning unless you’ve got a nice slr. (but probably too much trouble)

Not sure if HD cameras have finally reaced film’s exposure latitude or not. I’ve seen a lot of things showing off thier ability to shoot in candle light, etc. but that’s not the same thing.

[Arnie Schlissel]

[Bret Williams] “Not sure if HD cameras have finally reaced film’s exposure latitude or not. I’ve seen a lot of things showing off thier ability to shoot in candle light, etc. but that’s not the same thing.”

It’s getting closer. I went to a demo last year where they showed test footage from several top of the line cameras, and some actually had a pretty good range of contrast. The Sony F 950 & Arri D-20 were probably the best that they showed, and they weren’t to far behind the super 16 that they used for a baseline. Dalsa claims something like 10 or 12 stops of contrast range, but the 2 or 3 times I’ve seen footage from these cameras projected I didn’t like the look of it.

Arnie
Now in post: Peristroika, a film by Slava Tsukerman
https://www.arniepix.com/blog

[Uli Plank]

I wouldn’t consider latitude such an important factor here. Stop-motion is normally shot under carefully controlled lighting conditions, which any decent digicam can handle. It’s outdoors where film still has an advantage.
I get excellent stop-motion results from my Canon 10D with a very good macro prime on it. I’d second the suggestion to capture large. Stop-motion is so much work, you’ll want the full quality at the source, and storage is cheap these days. Who knows, your movie might be so good, it could get sccreened in HD one day or even deserve a transfer to film?
One more thing: If your images show some very soft gradients in background, you should rather shoot raw (if the Sony does that). I’ve seen banding on some images with subtle color transitions when grabbed in Photo-JPEG and later compressed further for DVD.

Regards,

Uli

Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.