Using iStopMotion professionally
iStopMotion HR offers a lot of functionality important to professionals. First and foremost, the iStopMotion HR license allows production of movies with a resolution higher than PAL/NTSC.
Robust Tool - The architecture of the application, which is based on the robust and reliable Mac OS X Cocoa frameworks and the time proven QuickTime technology, has been reworked to be fast enough to capture and display frames at high resolution. A compressed preview movie is rendered alongside the uncompressed original frames to allow real time replay of the captured sequence.
High Image Quality - The original material is saved uncompressed in a QuickTime file that can be used directly with many popular postproduction tools such as Final Cut Pro from Apple where it can be easily integrated with other video clips.
High Resolution Support - Several high res capture devices have been qualified to work with iStopMotion, among them industrial high res video cameras with FireWire interfaces. iStopMotion HR also includes the iStopMotion Digital Still Camera Plugin so that you can use a digital still camera in order to improve image quality.
Features unique to iStopMotion HR
- High resolution capturing Capture uncompressed images with the full resolution of your video or still camera.
- Sound Support Import a sound track to guide your animation, making it easy to do lip syncing or timing to a beat.
- Noise Reduction (sometimes referred to as "Frame Averaging") helps to improve the quality of video sources by eliminating the video CCD effect of "color speckles".
Using Film Cameras
All 16mm and 35mm film camera can record single frames. The traditional method of stop motion however is to use a camera that is specifically designed for stop motion that has a frame grabber attached for preview. This is necessary because you never know what it going to look like until you process the film, and you need to know you've got the shot you are after. Framegrabbers however have limitations (they usually can only record 1-5 seconds) and are hard to find. With iStop Motion all you need to do is connect your video split to a computer, and you can preview your shots to any length. This means you can hire any film camera and a video split and be producing film quality stop motion.
What you need:
- Film Camera
- Video Split
- Mac
- Video Capture Card or Mini DV deck with the capacity of video in and firewire out to operate simultaneously. Most camera JVC, Panasonic and Sony decks have this capacity.
Decks tested
Recommended: Great all round deck, Sony DSR45 (its DVCAM, supports MiniDV and DVCAM and has analogue, firewire, component in and out, balanced in and out, and RS 232 machine control)
Thanks to Craig Deeker of Fear of Denim for this information.
