Please, help with stop-motion

[Walter Biscardi]

Shoot more in-between shots. The more frames of action you have, the smoother it will be.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Now in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com

Now editing “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

G5 Dual 2.0, AJA Kona 2, Medea FCR2X

[Bensne]

I have already shot the piece by taping 6 frames at a time with a Z1U. I was just wondering if I can make the motion smoother in Motion. There is some effect I found in Final Cut for stop motion animation, but it produces a sort of double exposure on screen that I am not really happy with. Any other suggestions?

[Jim Kanter]

Are you removing 5 of the 6 frames for each “frame”?

Also, more frames per second on playback will make for smoother motion (24 fps strobes more than 30)

Jim Kanter,
Digital Film Institute
http://www.dfilminst.com

[Bensne]

No, I am not. The HDV Z1 has a setting on it for stop motion animation that tapes for 6 frames everytime the record button is pressed. I moved the objects progressively about 1″ after shooting it each time. As it is now the motion looks kind of decent in all of my shots. I would just like to make them a little more fluid. Thought there might be a something in Motion or some other program that might help accomplish this.

[Bill Mcguire]

You might try one of the Morphing programs (Morphage…$80, Morph X… free). I also remember a program that would automatically add frames in between (you could specify the number of fill in frames) but I can’t remember the name of it. Perhaps someone else can. If you find out, let us know..

[Doyle Rockwell]

C’mon, Walter, you can do better than that 😉

Using an optical flow-based retimer can help smooth this stuff out a little, as well as letting you add motion blur to stuff that’s supposed to be moving fast. RE:Vision Twixtor and Realviz Retimer are a couple, as well as the new time-warping stuff in Shake 4.

To use that method, though, you’ll need to go into your clip and separate it out into unique frames, reducing the duplicates. i.e. if frames 1-6, 7-12, 13-18, 19-24, and 25-30 are all groups of six-frame dupes, that, together, form one second (30fps), then you make a new image sequence of just 5 unique frames: 1,7,13,19,25. You can then use the above-mentioned tools to stretch that 5-frame dealie back out into 30. Extrapolating 25 new frames from 5 will be fairly heinous, though, so you might want to just reduce your sequence down to 15 frames to keep the extrapolation smoother (only doubling to get back to 30).

Off-topic: Walter, if you’re editing GE in HD, when do I get to watch it? I’m dying, having to watch AB do his thing in SD, tell those FN people to upgrade ASAP! (mmmm…acronyms).

[Jim Kanter]

In Motion you can trim the clips to 1 frame each. You will want to modify the amount of change between frames if you do this.

You might also consider dissolves between the clips/frames (the cheap way to do an “optical flow”).

Jim Kanter,
Digital Film Institute
http://www.dfilminst.com

[Bensne]

Thank you for all your suggestions. I will let you know what works best for me.

[Bensne]

I have stuck with the Final Cut stop motion blur effect in the video filter menu. I altered the effects blur rate per frame, the amount of overlap, and disintegration. It has worked out very well for me. The motion is very fluid. Once again thanks for all of your input.

[Kevlareditor]

One thing you can do to extract single frames is to take the clip into After Effects and re-time it at 1/6th it’s original length, and turn frame blending off. You should automatically pluck every 6th frame without manual editing. This is assuming that it records exacly 6 frames each time.