Topic: Stop Motion Program Feature Ideas

This thread is a place to exchange ideas for features that you would enjoy having in a Stop-Mo App, or to discuss one's you particularly enjoy in already exsisting Stop motion software.

The point of this is,

1. To help me and my partner in further develop of our stop-mo software we are creating.
2. To collaborate on your favorite features and ideas.

Any feedback, requests, or comments are greatly appreciated! Thanks again!

Last edited by kevin66655 (January 18, 2009 (07:25pm))

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Re: Stop Motion Program Feature Ideas

Well, onion skinning is certainly one. I like the rotoscoping feature in iStopmotion, too.

https://i.imgur.com/1JxY79v.png

Re: Stop Motion Program Feature Ideas

are you thinking of selling this?

User formerly known as "LEGO"

Re: Stop Motion Program Feature Ideas

1) Must support a remote control. Could be as simple as a USB game controler, but I must be able to take a frame away from the computer.

2) Must support USB video from a webcam.

3) Must support video from a camcorder

4) Must support frame capture from a digital camera

5) Onion skinning

6) Control point on the screen

7) Able to render at least a raw uncompressed video

8.) Able to store files on a network drive.

9) Able to support two cameras. (Money shot and preview)

10) Able to take automatic picrures every few second for flicker tests

11) Able to send out a control signal (via parallel port) to control an external camera.

12) Able to access image controls (brightness contrast) is the device supports it.

13) Frame averaging.

14) Review of previous frames.

15) Deleting and duplicating frames.

16) Preview of last n frames in a video

17) Work under XP and VISTA (gag, gasp, retch,..)

That should give you enough to do for the first few days.

Skye Sweeney
www.fll-freak.com

Re: Stop Motion Program Feature Ideas

Thanks for the feedback! Keep it coming!
(Oh, and we are not sure just yet if we are going to make people pay for it, but there is a good chance that we might be realeasing it as freeware. Seeing how we have already completed quite a bit of work on it.

Last edited by kevin66655 (January 18, 2009 (03:28pm))

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Re: Stop Motion Program Feature Ideas

Hazzat wrote:

Well, onion skinning is certainly one. I like the rotoscoping feature in iStopmotion, too.

Why'd you name it poo.mov? mini/lol

NXTManiac

Last edited by NXTManiac (January 18, 2009 (03:29pm))

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Re: Stop Motion Program Feature Ideas

If you watch the full movie. You'll know... mini/wink

Allowing you to rearrange frames in the timeline. I've had to do this a few times.

https://i.imgur.com/1JxY79v.png

Re: Stop Motion Program Feature Ideas

Yes, we have already begun implementing a drag and drop frame timeline.

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Re: Stop Motion Program Feature Ideas

Make it work with Canon Powershots. Like the A95!!

Last edited by MooCJ (January 18, 2009 (05:25pm))

Re: Stop Motion Program Feature Ideas

It should be able to compress videos while saving.
EDIT: How does one develop Stop-Mo software? Any good tuts?

Last edited by fib12345 (January 18, 2009 (05:51pm))

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"actuallly this involves spiderman too, not batman. but im also taking a new approach, more comedy, less action. i dont see to many movies like that with more comedy than action" --SteveStarfyTV on an Indiana Jones meets Star Wars idea.

Re: Stop Motion Program Feature Ideas

Ok, I believe that Powershots should work if they support remote capture (obviously) such as the A95, A620, and A640.

For video compression, that may unfortunately be a problem. This is because we have not yet found a way to compile the frames within the app, but only to capture the raw frames, although you can quite easily load these frames into an application like Virtualdub with ease, since our program auto-numbers your frames for you(I should hope to make a tutorial on doing this in the near future, for those who do not understand how to do this). "Compiling" your frames in Virtualdub will also allow you to compress your video from within the program, which is good, because you can add any effects or what not to your raw frames, before turning them into a video file (Which can be a pain to work with video when trying to do things such as masking).  But, you can be assured that we are indeed looking into this feature, and have given it quite a bit of thought, but there are no guarantees.

Thanks again for all the replies, and keep them coming!

(Oh, and if you wanna learn how to develop a Stop-mo Program, all I can say is there are no tutorials I know of, and you are going to have to know some sort of programing language. (don't try it, unless you are really determined and know what you are doing.)

Last edited by kevin66655 (January 18, 2009 (07:23pm))

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Re: Stop Motion Program Feature Ideas

This sounds great. Good luck with it.

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Re: Stop Motion Program Feature Ideas

Thanks for your interest! Keep the features coming!

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Re: Stop Motion Program Feature Ideas

1)supports powershots as well as QCs.
2)chroma key
3)video effects
4)foregrounds/backgrounds
5)free for all members of BiM! mini/lol
seriously.

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click me for my YouTube!

Re: Stop Motion Program Feature Ideas

1.) It must support a webcam
2.) It must be free OR under $50 USD
3.) It must include all the above features mini/lol
4.) It must NOT work with Vista (just kidding)

Re: Stop Motion Program Feature Ideas

With all these features we are giving you, this may be better than Stop Motion Pro.

Oh I suggest you make this have a time lapse tool also.

Re: Stop Motion Program Feature Ideas

Ok, once again thanks for all these great ideas! As for the price of it, we are not sure of anything just yet. But, I can tell you that if we were perhaps going to put a price on it, that we have already decided that the best version (If we realease multiple versions) will be 50 or less.

We will definitely include a time lapse tool, because it is very easy to make, and we have already figured out the code involved in doing so. It seems all we have to do is add a "timer" or delay that you can set for it to take pictures automatically, which should be quite easy to achieve, once again.

We have also thought of a way to implement chroma-key, and it should hopefully not be that difficult, which is good, so that is a feature we are quite likely to have. And, video effects are also a very good idea, and we have already thought about including some standard video effect filters into the program, such as bloom, sepia, b and w,
and maybe some distortion effects.

As always, thanks for all your comments and ideas, and keep them coming!

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Re: Stop Motion Program Feature Ideas

kevin66655 wrote:

We have also thought of a way to implement chroma-key, and it should hopefully not be that difficult, which is good, so that is a feature we are quite likely to have.

I suspect you will have trouble with this feature! Chromakey is not as simple as replacing one pixel with another if it is a given color. First of all, you must look for a range of colors. For that you will need to understand and implement one of several color modes like RGB. How will the range be specified? can it be modified?

Second, you will need to learn how to flood fill an area. You can't simply replace ALL pixels that match a color. You must replace all pixels that match the color and are adjacent to other pixels that matched and do that all the way back to a seed location given to you by the user.

Third, you will need to learn how to supress spill. Most good chromakey plugins will subtract away the spill color from the foreground along the edges.

There is a reason that realtime chromakey and plugins are expensive. It took software engineers, color experts,  and algorithm experts years to solve some of these basic issues. Let alone advance the art by automaticaly accounting for jpeg or DV artifacts that show up as nasty lines with simpler keys.

What you might want to consider is writting your software to follow the AE plugin model. This would allow a chromakey plugin to work with your software as well as other plugins.

Skye Sweeney
www.fll-freak.com

Re: Stop Motion Program Feature Ideas

It must be able to import sound and move it around. The only app that I can use for this is on another machine, and it's quite annoying to have to send everything over my house network from one machine to another. It must also work with multiple Operating Systems. XP, Vista, Linux, Mac OSX.

Re: Stop Motion Program Feature Ideas

Ok, I have done quite a bit of extensive research on chroma-key, and used it hundreds of times in my own films, and I see where you are coming from. So, I suppose you are right about spill reduction, and a range of colors, but we haven't really been focusing on chroma-key, because I personally think it is much more practical and convenient to extract a blue or greenscreen in an editing program, such as AE. Also, the program is cross platform and will work for Linux, Mac, and Windows operating systems. As far as sound goes, we are trying to work on a rotoscoping type sound tool, which should hopefully be similar to what you described. Thanks again!

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