making a movie with digital pictures

lselmek wrote on 8/15/2005, 9:09 AM
My son is trying to make a movie using Sony Vegas Movie Maker 4.0. He has used our Kodak digital camera to take about 500 pictures of lego sets, moving them slightly before taking each pictures. We imported them into Vegas and he now wants to add sound/special effects for his movie. He is disappointed at how slow it goes from frame to frame, he needs it to move along quickly for it to look somewhat like a movie.

Any suggestions?

2. Can you add a voice to an indiviual pictures?

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 8/15/2005, 10:13 AM
I don't have version 4, and the manual covers surprisingly few details. However, this function from the full version of Vegas might be in Studio 4. Options / Preferences / Editing / New still image length. If you have this option you can try setting the length to 0.033 seconds for 30fps or 0.04 seconds for 25fps or whatever is appopriate. Any pictures added to the timeline after making this change will have this new duration.

If that option isn't available, there is a way to hack the internal preferences to accomplish the same thing. I won't give you those details unless absolutely necessary, though if you search through these forums you'll probably find several discussions explaining how to do it.

Another option is to select all the stills on the timeline, group them together, then Ctrl-Drag the right edge of the last still over to the left. This will shrink the entire group, making them play faster. You can speed it up to 4x this way. If you then render this faster version to an AVI file and start a new project with this new file, you can speed it up another 4x. Repeat as necessary to get the final speed you desire. Repeating this three times will result in 12.8fps, which is probably sufficient. Of course, you can do less a less than 4x increase to get 12.8fps up to 30fps instead of 51.2.

You can add audio clips of any duration anywhere in the project. Record the voice and save it as a .wav file (Vegas Studio should do this automatically when you record), then place the wave file in an audio track the same way you put the pictures on the video track. You can slide it left or right to light it up with the video wherever you want it to be. Add as many recordings as you wish.
dibbkd wrote on 8/15/2005, 10:26 AM
I was about to suggest the same thing that cheinworks did, that's the only way I've found to speed up the frame rate of photos, which isn't bad really.

I'd be interested in seeing that movie, sounds cool!
Chienworks wrote on 8/15/2005, 11:08 AM
http://www.chienworks.com/media/lego-castle-1-square.wmv

Just a little something i threw together a couple years ago.
dibbkd wrote on 8/16/2005, 5:37 AM
Chien, that was cool, how long did it take you to make that and how many snapshots did it take??
Elmo27376 wrote on 8/16/2005, 12:36 PM
Chien,

That was fantastic! I'm still chuckling. I hope you get time to answer dibbkd's questions; I'd be interested in knowing also.
Chienworks wrote on 8/16/2005, 2:24 PM
Lessee, dumping it on the timeline it looks like (minus the title) about 1350 frames. I think it took about 3 hours or so. I cheated a bit: i built the entire set first in about half an hour, then took snapshots as i dismantled it one brick at a time. That way i had a good idea of what i wanted the end to look like before i started "filming".

If you watch the background carefully you can see the towel gradually working it's way upwards, since it slowly slipped down as i was filming. You'll also see my cat's tail in the picture a couple of times. It's easy to get sloppy and not bother looking through the viewfinder for every shot. I suppose i could cut those few frames out without noticeably affecting the flow. At least this time i didn't get my own hand in the frame at all.

Anybody got any more spare Legoâ„¢ lying around they wanna donate? I'd love to do one maybe a couple square metres at the base and over a metre tall. That would probably need over 50,000 bricks. That would also be a tremendously long video at one brick per frame.
Elmo27376 wrote on 8/16/2005, 5:33 PM
I've been thinking about this process and wondered if this would work also:

Set up a camcorder rather than a still digital camera. Use your reverse building technique and shoot a short burst of movie after removing one brick, pausing after each burst.

Scene detect would seperate the bursts during capture.

Drag each burst to the timeline and shorten it to 2 or 3 frames. Or does that sound like more work that using a still camera?

Having done a bit of stop frame animation I'm impressed on how steady your camera was throughout the process, an essential condition for stop frame work. How did you manage to expose a frame on a still camera without moving the camera?

Great work!







Chienworks wrote on 8/16/2005, 7:13 PM
In actual fact, for that video i did use my digital camcorder. I connected firewire out to my computer and used VidCap to capture stills. I'd remove a brick, type Ctrl-R, Enter ... remove a brick, Ctrl-R, Enter ... etc. I never touched the camera for the duration.

Remember those old cable release thingies they used to have for 35mm cameras? I've seen some with a suction-cup type arrangement that might work on some digital cameras. Some digital cameras also come with electronic remote shutter release capability. One old digital camera i had had a nifty function in that when it was connected via serial port to the computer, the computer could control the camera and i could take pictures with the keyboard.

Avoid tape for animations if at all possible. The repeated starting and pausing can wear out the tape and the camera's transport. Also, importing all those clips separately and condensing them to a few frames is a very tedious task. I believe there are some scripts available to automate it, but it's still a hassle compared to Vegas' Open Image Sequence function.
IanG wrote on 8/17/2005, 3:59 AM
My Fuji S7000 uses those old cable releases - there must be others. If a cable / remote shutter release isn't an option you can reduce camera shake by using the camera's self timer.

Ian G.
ADinelt wrote on 8/17/2005, 5:16 AM
That was great Chienworks. Boy, does that ever bring back a lot of memories from High School. I was in the Photography Club and did a lot of stop motion animation (Willis O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen were my idols). For models, I used the G.I Joe action figures (notice I didn't say dolls). About a year and a half ago, I came across my old Super 8 films and transferred them to DVD. What I thought was great stuff when I was 15 looks pretty cheezy now!! I remember setting up one scene to try and duplicate the opening from 2001 - A Space Odyssey. Had black bristol board for space with pin holes punched in it for the stars with a small hole in the center covered with clear yellow plastic for the sun. I spent about 4 hours slowly animating cut outs of the earth and moon as in the real film. The bright light used for the sun was dangerously overheating the bristol board as some smoke was starting to come off the board. Anyway, once the filming was done, I went to take the film out to send away for developing and lo and behold, I forgot to put the film in the camera.

Al