iStopMotion 2 Features

Workflow

iStopMotion 2 introduces a variety of new workflows to give animators the ability to fully concentrate on animating.

• Workflow based on convenient presets that keep the complexity from the user.
• Ships with common presets that cover most needs.
• Power users can customize all details to their needs.
• Presets also include export and playback settings.
• User can create own document presets, to have presets that fit their special needs.

• Playback movies are now rendered in background, so you don't have to wait long when pressing play.
• Saving is now instantaneous as images are captured directly into the right movie.
• Option to auto-save your work, so you never lose any frames should the software crash.
• An iStopMotion project is a fully compatible QuickTime movie, so it can be used directly by other applications.
• Convenient export based on presets.
• Full aspect ratio support for documents and video sources, based on presets.
• Support for frame-based count in addition to timecode display.

• Additional time code window
• Integration with Final Cut Pro (5.1 or later required).

Time Lapse Recording

• Capture a single frame or a sequence of frames at predefined intervals.
• You can now time-lapse a scene with a interval smaller than one second (depends on video resolution and hardware speed).
• AppleScript support lets you schedule start and stop as well as frequency of time lapse recording sessions.

Live Recording

• You can now record real-time events directly into your stop motion project.
• Frame rates will be automatically converted so you can record from a PAL video camera into a 15 FPS project.

Chroma-Keying

• Automatic chroma-key color detection for easier use.
• Chroma-keying only changes the transparency of image pixels, not the image itself.
• Power users can customize range, feather and chroma-key color.

Animation Features

Animating your scene is the heart of your movie. iStopMotion provides several basic and advanced features to help you animate.

• Preview overlay gives animators precise control.
• Onion Skinning to make inter-frame motion visible.

• Blinking.
• Grid. A overlaid grid can be displayed in the preview area helping the animator to position animated objects.
• Frames based user interface for easy editing.
• Title/Action Safe Area overlay.
• Aspect Ratio overlay for when you want to animate for different screens.
• Rearrange Frames for interesting effects.
• Capture multiple frames at once to reduce workload.
• Delete frames, for those rare occasions when you messed up.
• You can now load movies as a reference, or ‘rotoscope’. This is helpful for combining real-world movies with animated parts. It can also be used to do lip-synching.
• As you usually need this reference when working on the next frame there's an option to look one frame ahead in the rotoscope track.
• See the rotoscope movie in the way most useful to you. In the main window, splitting the display in two, in a separate window, or blended with your captured frames.
• Choose to also have the sound of the rotoscope movie playing.
• Offset the rotoscope movie to match your scene.
• Add a sound track, displayed as a waveform in the timeline to help identify critical points.

• Offset the sound track to match your scene.

Compositing

Use images or movies for putting them behind or in front of your recording.

• Use bundled media as foreground and background objects.
• Import your own images or movies for the background and foreground.

• When using background media, the source feed will be chroma-keyed.

General

• Movie resolutions up to 720×576 pixels.
• "Unlimited" resolution, allows movies with up to 10000×10000 pixels.
• Flexible framerates.
• Customize frameoffset of movie.
• Images are stored at maximum quality uncompressed.
• Switch between every supported device easily.
• Use any QuickTime-supported device.
• Remote Capture support for PTP-compatible still cameras. (see the list of supported still cameras)
• Noise Reduction (aka Frame Averaging) feature improves image quality from video cameras and the Apple iSight.

• Flip or rotate incoming source so you can use your camera upside down to get closer to the objects.
• Compressed Preview for smooth preview instant replay at high resolutions or with less powerful Macs.
• Preview Zoom to fit large resolutions on your computer screen.

Shortcuts

• There are a lot more shortcuts to be controlled via keyboard or speech recognition.
• All shortcuts are fully customizable. Check the Shortcuts preference pane for details.
• Use the Apple Remote delivered with recent Macs to capture, play and navigate your movie.
• AppleScript support to integrate other remote control devices.

Export

Export your work to any common QuickTime movie format to use it as footage for iMovie or Final Cut or share it with your friends and colleges. QuickTime is a versatile file format that can be used in many applications. Produce movie files for DVD, HD video, web, iPod, iPhone and Apple TV.

• Simple export with provided export presets.

• Export using any QuickTime exporter installed on your computer.

Flipbook Printing

• Print good old flip books from your animation.

Universal Application

• Runs natively on PowerPC and Intel-based Macs.