How to make a stop-motion video in Windows 7
May 22, 2010 8:09 AM Subscribe
How should I make a stop motion video using a free program on Windows 7?
I'm making a stop motion music video and I was wondering what my free options were for its creation. I was planning on using windows movie maker but I'm not sure how easy it would be, and I thought that there might be better, free options out there considering all I'm doing is stringing a bunch of stills together with some music. If you have any recommendations for how to do this I'd really appreciate it! If it matters, I'm probably going to aim for 10 stills per second. Thanks!
I'm making a stop motion music video and I was wondering what my free options were for its creation. I was planning on using windows movie maker but I'm not sure how easy it would be, and I thought that there might be better, free options out there considering all I'm doing is stringing a bunch of stills together with some music. If you have any recommendations for how to do this I'd really appreciate it! If it matters, I'm probably going to aim for 10 stills per second. Thanks!
Picasa will make a video from a series of stills. Use the Time Lapse option and you can tweak what the frame rate should be. You can accompany the movie with an MP3 audio track. Super easy.
posted by chocolate_butch at 11:13 AM on May 22, 2010
posted by chocolate_butch at 11:13 AM on May 22, 2010
If you're doing genuine stop motion i.e. animating an object frame by frame so that it looks like that object is moving unaided when you run the film back then you're better off using software designed for the task. Generally that means that the program will "onion skin" so that you can see both your previous and current frames overlayed to ensure that your animation is working properly.
This page has descriptions of, and links to, everything from free up to professional standard software that you can use.
posted by merocet at 1:31 PM on May 22, 2010
This page has descriptions of, and links to, everything from free up to professional standard software that you can use.
posted by merocet at 1:31 PM on May 22, 2010
I recently used Windows Movie Maker (v2.6) for just this purpose [self-link]. It was quick and easy, but not perfect. It has a maximum rate of 8 frames per second (in Tools/Options, set default still image duration to 0.125). It started to slow down significantly when I had a about a hundred 10 megapixel pictures in there-- when I clicked to add titles, it would take 5-10 seconds to respond. However, it never crashed. Adobe Premiere CS3 would crash after about 5 still images! My total animation was about 40 seconds and 300 images long; it would've been annoying to try to use it for something more ambitious.
posted by moonmilk at 2:54 PM on May 22, 2010
posted by moonmilk at 2:54 PM on May 22, 2010
i've used 'stop motion pro'??? i had a free version which did the onionskin thing pretty nicely, you could adjust the transparency and number of previous captures if i remember correctly.
i can probably dig it up if you haven't settled on another solution.
posted by kimyo at 3:34 PM on May 22, 2010
i can probably dig it up if you haven't settled on another solution.
posted by kimyo at 3:34 PM on May 22, 2010
Response by poster: I tried using Windows Live Movie Maker and it was actually pretty easy, so I'm gonna go with that but thank-you for all of your answers! If I'm ever making a more intense one I will definitely use of these tool!
posted by kylej at 7:54 PM on May 22, 2010
posted by kylej at 7:54 PM on May 22, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by sanka at 9:03 AM on May 22, 2010