Stop Motion

[3simplewords]

I'm wanting to experiment by doing some stop motion animation but I'm completely clueless how to do this with a HVX200
I've done stop motion with a digital SLR before but with actual video footage I'm not even sure where to begin really. I've been hearing of frame grabbing software etc but would be really beneficial if anyone could point me in the right direction as to how this process is done with a HVX200

Thanks x

[Cassius]

Software is the only effective method. You hook up your HVX with a firewire cable to a computer, allowing the computer to see a live feed (set it to a not PN framerate), then use animation software to grab individual frames just like you would with a still camera, but on the computer. It usually stores a high quality JPEG of each image and can output a video file at the end. I don't have that software anymore so I can't link you to it, but they're easy enough to find.

[DJDecay]

Stop-Mo is not going to work well with the HVX, if you even turn the camera off once during a say a 1,800 frame shot, you'll loose consistency as the lens is motorized. During this time the HVX will have to be powered by its adapter for hours, as you take one frame after another via its firewire output using a computer (that can be easily set up). You'll overheat/burn out your camera in a likely case of intense stop-mo work.

If you've done stop-mo with a DSLR you know you need one of those old-school manual focus prime lenses without a camera actuated F-stop / iris ring that all the new lenses have, and after about 100,000 shots that Canon or Nikon mirrors break. You cannot do this with the HVX, as the lens is fixed to the camera, and even with a 35mil adapter you're still going throgh a motorized lens. But a broken HVX is far worse than a broken DSLR, the DSLR res is much better for stop-mo that the HVX could ever be.

There are a few onion-skinning packages for stopmotion work for the MAC and use a standard firewire device and pict bridge to transfer images. None are over $300.

I would also not use HVX for timelapse either. For short timelapse you can use HVX at a slow frame rate and then drop every 24th frame out or somesuch.
But its much cheaper (and better quality/resolution) to do it on 35mm cam with intervolvmeter or with Cheap DSLR with an IR remote and an old prime.

If you insist on doing it in HD (vs. RGB) use an industrial HD camera and dump 4:4:4 raw via USB or Firewire.

Dont fry your HVX.

OK, OK. If you must know. HD Monitor PRO - $1200 for Mac includes an image overlay feature, is used to match a shot to a previous shot during filming.
You can use this like pseudo onion-skin software to take framegrabs from the sensor via firewire. But this will take 200 times longer than iStopMotion and a DSLR would.

Here is a link to a guy that shot a Pizza Ad with iStopMotion HD pro and an HVX.

http://broadcastengineering.com/hdtv/megalis_studio_shoots_commercial_0205/


-DK