StopMotion Station 1.2

StopMotion Station turns a PC and an image source into a single frame movie camera and versatile movie viewer. Shoot classic animation in all styles, shoot and view motion tests, invent new media and new styles, and see any suitable series of photos as a movie - all instantly, at any speed. You operate StopMotion Station using the keyboard. The Enter key is the cameras shutter release button and the Spacebar controls playback. The Up Arrow and Down Arrow keys set the movies speed, from 1 to 30 frames per second. The monitor becomes either the cameras viewfinder or the movie screen. StopMotion Station stores the frames you shoot as sequentially numbered JPEG files. It Plays the movie by showing the frames in sequence, forward or reverse, at the speed you set. You can Play any folder or a sequence of folders containing JPEG photos as a movie, though it works best if all the photos are the same pixel size and fit a VGA (640 x 480) screen. You can cut, copy, paste, and delete frames, and rearrange folders to edit your movie. When StopMotion Station starts, it changes the display to VGA (640 x 480) and attempts to connect to an image source. It requires DirectX 8 or above for connecting to a camera and capturing frames. You use the Setup dialog to choose a folder for Shooting or Viewing, to select and configure a camera, to set options for scaling and cropping the frames, or to set up Timelapse shooting. Open the Setup dialog by right-clicking the mouse or pressing function key F2. Left-clicking the mouse opens a Mode/Play dialog that gives you some options via a conventional dialog, but everything you can do through the dialog - and much more - can be done directly from the keyboard. Please read the Help file for a complete reference and description of what StopMotion Station does. You can view some Demo (Sample) movies by choosing View demo movies on the Setup dialogs Main menu or pressing the F12 key in either Shoot or View modes.