Adventures into stop motion

kris — Sun, 17 May 2009 08:31:41 +0000

Everyone seems to be getting into time-lapse as a means of creating video from photographs, but because the scene is fundamentally static, there needs to be significant activity/action in order for it not to be boring.

Alternatively I’ve been looking at creating video using stop-motion. Before you see my example below, here are my steps (and settings):

1. Take pics

* ISO 100
* AV Mode; Aperture f/11
* Manual focus on infinity
* Burst mode

2. Resize
Use mogrify (from the ImageMagick suite)

$ mogrify -resize 640×480 *.JPG

3. Convert to flash video
Use avidemux (or simply ffmpeg if you are hardcore)

NOTE: Image files should be alphabetically/numerically sequential

* File -> Open : Select first jpeg
* Video -> Frame Rate : Specifiy desired frame rate (such as 15 fps)
* From Video dropdown : Select FLV1 (lavc)
* From Format dropdown : Select FLV

- optional add audio -

* Audio -> Main Track

+ Audio Source : External WAV/MP3
+ External File : Browse to MP3

* From Audio dropdown : Select MP3 (LAME)

- generate video -

* File -> Save -> Save Video (Ctrl-S) : Give it a name

And then you can end up with something like (or hopefully better than) this:

According to Kris » Video

Adventures into stop motion