Can DVX100A act as Single Frame Animation Camera?

Crazy_Ideas

Crazy_Ideas

Active member
Can DVX100A act as Single Frame Animation Camera? By creating a movie frame by frame? By you controlling the frame taken one at a time?
 
Yes, sort of. It has a one-shot capability, but because it's a tape-based camera you can't control it precisely to one frame; it records a burst of frames. The smallest burst is 1/2 second IIRC. So you can use it in one-shot mode and then speed your footage up in post by 15x and it becomes single-frame.

Or, you can use capturing software that just captures one frame at a time and keep the DVX tethered to your computer via firewire.
 
Also consider using a digital still camera instead. A 5+ megapixel camera on an animation stand will produce higher resolution than a DVX. If I was going to use my DVX, I would definitely capture to a hard drive, as you would start running up the hour meter if you were using tapes.

Here's a grab from something I'm working on...(the original is 2592 X 1944, I had to downsize to 1000 X 750 to upload).
1160973237.jpg
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Canon A95
 
A good digital still camera is the way to go for pro stuff. They used them on The Corpse Bride because, they said, they actually produced a sharper clearer image than 35mm film. Also, stop motion works pretty nicely on the HVX200 since you can record to HD or memory card one frame at a time.
 
Haha! No Scharky, it's actually the Blue Skink. I never realized the similarities in headgear, though. Drawings of this little fella go back to 1992 when I lived in Chicago, and one of my roomates from that time did end up working for a big ad agency later, I wonder...
 
What a great idea using a digital camera, it also numbers each fram sequentially too, perfect for importing!
 
Tons of good information on the subject here
http://www.stopmotionanimation.com/

I would recomend starting out with a dvx wired to a computer with frame capture software to get the feel for animation first. That way you have instant playback while you learn. Later you can move to a digital SLR type camera for higher quality productions.
 
I do not see much point in gigamegapixel stills, as they have to be scaled down to 720X576 or 480 for SD video anyhow (or 1024 x vertical for widescreen depending on the editor). If the horizontal pixel count is equal to or slightly bigger than the final video resolution you are OK.

Scaling down thousands or tens of thousands of multimegapixel images to minuscule DV standard is a waste of time and hard disk space.

I just shot a 2 minute time-lapse (10 hours) with Canon EOS-1MkII and I set it to shoot the smallest frame (about 1700x1200) at worst JPG possible (with that camera). Even then I had to scale the frames to 1024 pix wide, which took my PC about 45 minutes.

If you plan to shoot something 4k future-proof, then shoot the highest quality, for everything else "just good enough" is the best choise and the least hassle.
 
As I understand it 4k means 4000 pixels, the width of the picture. Thus you would need a digital camera with native 11 Mpixel sensor or better. Like Canon 5D or DsMkII (12 and 16 Mpix). And a good lens.

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Backgound math: If the frame is normal 3:2 as in 35mm pro DSLR, you get 4000x2667 = 10.7 Mpix, which would be the minimum size.
 
When a movie is filmed using 35mm film, what frame size do they scan the negatives to so it could be projected in the movie theaters, or does it not work like that at the movies..
 
Traditionally you wouldn't be doing that type of scanning at all. You'd transfer the negative to video (usually standard-def) along with timecode and keykode, and the editor would cut a video edit and produce an "edit decision list", which a negative conformer would then apply to the film negative. He'd cut the film in accordance with what the video edit dictates, and then they would print the release prints from that conformed negative.

So full resolution scans weren't done, nor was anything printed back to film.

Nowadays it's more common to do a "digital intermediate", where the film gets scanned in at high res (typically 2k, sometimes 4k) and processed/color corrected/graded etc, has effects composited and whatnot, and then that gets recorded back out to film using a film recorder.
 
Plus, with a digital SLR, you can get pretty much true depth of field of a 35 mm camera (it's not exact, but close).

As was mentioned before, you won't have to snap the pictures at full resolution. You can still take lower resolution pictures and still be very good, plus still have the depth of field 35mm offers.

I've done that with my Nikon D70.
 
With 35mm still camera DOF is even worse* than with 35mm cine...

*) some might think better... There is less DOF with 35mm stills than cine, as the frame size is quite a lot bigger at least with full frame cameras (of which there are only a few). A 1.6x crop factor DSLR is quite close to 35mm movie frame size.
 
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