Low Cost Stop Motion Frame Grabber Set-up
Okay, I am
not an expert at this but I read a lot and understand
computer fundamentals, downloading, installing, etc..
This Frame Grabber requires the use of a PC and a few
other accessories.. This is an ANALOG
set-up / configuration (NOT digital-firewire). Please do
not ask me if there is an animation set-up for under
$50.! This requires some minimal upfront investment, or
do not get into the hobby if you cannot afford it. What
you need:
PC : With a
Windows operating system and most PC's
do have a USB connection ......you got
to have USB! As you read further this
set-up I am describing does not require any video capture
card ..... it works through the USB connection.
Hi-8mm Camcorder ( with manual focus &
exposure option and RCA video out ) : These are Analog Hi-8mm
Camcorder which unfortunately are being replaced
by the miniDV-type Digital Camcorders (with the firewire
connections), but the good news is, that these Hi-8mm
camcorders are now very affordable and one can get lots
of features .... they are about $400. and under! I should
not need to mention, but you need a camera tripod, to
hold your camcorder, then lights, etc. You figure that
out or research it.
Frame Grabbing Software : Very important, you need to get
this specific animation frame grabbing program called Anasazi
Stop Motion Animator available from Marc Spess'
Animate Clay website. Because this software is FREE,
there is no technical support, however, it is so easy to
understand and Anasazi has its own help section included
with software. You must download the software in two
steps ......
First, get the original software, click, Anasazi SMA Download, then unzip & install. It will
be installed in program files on your computer,
under the folder name of SMA.
 Second, get the Anasazi SMA Update Download, unzip this in the sma -folder ..... then copy or
drag these two items (one at a time) into the SMA folder,
and answer Yes to Overwrite the original SMA files..Anasazi is now installed.
Video to USB Convertor : This
IS the essential item that will suppose to make this
set-up work. It is a signal adaptor/convertor, which you
connect to your Hi-8mm camcorder via the "RCA video
out", then, on the other end it connects to the USB
port on your computer. The live image signal that you are
going to frame grab/capture will go through
adaptor/convertor, then to USB, and finally into the
Anasazi Stop Motion Animator program. There are a few
brands, the most popular seem to be DAZZLE'S DVC80 (about $70. USA)
and comes with video editing and CD burning software so
you can transfer your animations onto CD's & create
VCD's (your PC must have a CD-RW drive), which many
consumer DVD players can accept & play VCD's, so that
you can show your animations to other's on their TV's.
And the other one is PINNACLE'S LINX (about
$50. USA) and also comes with its own video editing
software and ability to burn onto CD and create VCD
movies.
This
animation frame grabbing set-up is very basic, so do not
expect broadcast standard quality. If you want something
that requires minimal investment so you can do stop
motion tests and just practice, this might work for you.
When you get better, you can always upgrade to another
animation grabber set-up. The unique aspect of this
simple animation set-up is that you do not need a
video capture card ...... the image signal
conversion is done through the Dazzle DV Creator adaptor
connected to the PC's USB port.
The Ana sazi Stop Motion Animator program
is available for free from Marc Spess'
Animate Clay website. I have already posted the Anasazi
download links (above) which is from Marc's website and
here is a direct link to his Anasazi Download page in which he provides more
information. From Animate Clay's Message Board here is a
topic thread in which I asked more questions of Nick Ford
who says this combination of hardware/software was
successful for his stop motion set-up.........
Nick Ford
(8/9/02 3:27:50 pm)
Reply: Great way to bridge the gap between digital and
VHS
Someone may have posted this info already and I haven't
seen it, but I found a great option for going from
standard camcorder to digital video. I just have a
regluar ol' Sony camcorder with no single-frame ability
and wanted a way to make stop-motion animation on my
computer to post to the web. Originally I had bought an
$80 web camera and tried using Anasazi Stop-Motion with
it to make movies. Resolution and image quality on the
web cam was downright awful so I took it back the next
day. I found hardware at www.dazzle.com that does the job
wonderfully and at a good price. I ordered it and it
works 10-times as well as the web camera and the version
I bought was only around $60. I bought the Digital Video
Creator 80. It allows you to plug in a standard
camcorder, VCR, or even TV and save it as a digital file.
And, it works perfectly with Anasazi stop-mo. They have
various products ranging from just basic recording to you
hard drive to being able to record from your hard drive
to a VHS tape or even a high resolution DVD if you have a
DVD writer. Anyway, check them out. Nick
___________________
StopMoWorks
(8/12/02 6:05:17 am)
Reply: Dazzle & Anasazi
Can you elaborate a little more? I get questions from my
website, about people wanting to use most cost-effective
methods to start creating animations using just a regular
(non-firewire) camcorder. With the Digital Video Creator
80, does the computer require a analog video capture card
or is it all done through the USB connection with that
Dazzle adaptor? At the Dazzle site, I read the
specs/requirements and it does not say anything about a
video capture card.
I hear mixed opinions about Anasazi but it seems your
set-up works successfully? So, I assume that Anasazi does
not require using a analog video capture card, and can be
used with USB set-up? LIO
____________________
Nick Ford
(8/12/02 11:30:27 am)
Reply: Dazzle
No video capture card needed. I wondered about that too
before I bought it. Just plug the Dazzle product into
your CPU and plug any video camera, TV or VCR into the
Dazzle port. Works great with Anasazi. I think what
anasazi is programmed to do is search for any attatched
USB driven video capture hardware and when it finds it it
adopts the driver for the hardware because you can
actually change the same input settings in Anasazi as you
would inside the software that came with the video
hardware. As far as I can tell Anasazi has no motion blur
capability, but for a free program it works great for me.
Nick
____________________
StopMoWorks
(8/13/02 5:54:30 am)
Reply: Dazzle & Anasazi
Well, that is great news about the "no capture
card" and Anasazi seems to be compatible with the
Dazzle product. I know that analog capture cards (with
video in/out) are getting difficult to find (DC-10 not
available anymore) so the very common USB setup is a cool
& cheap option. Even though I have a complete digital
firewire set-up, I may consider testing your set-up,
however, it would require me to purchase the Dazzle
product you recommend, but may be worth investing in the
R & D, so that I can "confidentally"
recommend this combo on my website. So, with the free
Anasazi (thanks to Marc for keeping it alive &
available) and about $70. for the Dazzle Digital Video
Creator 80, it seems one can get a nice & very cost
effective animation setup using the regular analog
camcorders which many still have and less costly than the
DV/firewire camcorders. LIO
____________________
StopMoWorks
(8/14/02 1:45:00 am)
Reply: Onionskinning ??.....
......being one of Anasazi's animation features to
compare previously shot frame to current image/frame
..... I assume this works with your the Dazzle set-up?
Digital Video Creator 80 + Anasazi + analog camcorder.
LIO
_____________________
Nick Ford
(8/14/02 6:48:41 am)
Reply: Onion Skinning
Onion skinning does indeed work for me. From what I've
read though, in other message threads, Anasazi's onion
skin option has some issues running in Windows ME and XP?
I'm using Windows 98 SE though and it works just fine. I
just wish there was a way to capture that onion-skinned
image to use as an motion blur frame effect. As far as I
can tell there isn't. Yesterday I read up on all the
features of Stopmotion Pro and from what I can tell it's
quite superior to Anasazi, but then again Stop Motion Pro
is $179 and Anasazi is free. I'm brand new to claymation
so I'll stick with the free/cheap stuff untill I get more
involved. Nick
_____________________
StopMoWorks
(9/9/02 12:36:47 am)
Reply: Transferring to VHS or VCD
I see that the Dazzle DV Creator 80 comes with editing
software & software to burn VCD's? Is that right?
Have you tried transferring your animations done with
Anasazi & DVC80 onto VHS video tape or burning onto
VCD? I am guessing the quality may not be as good like
for professional broadcasting, but maybe good enough or
reasonable for beginners? LIO
______________________
Nick Ford
(9/9/02 7:56:30 am)
Reply: DVC80
I haven't tried using the software that came with the
DVC80 to make a VCD yet. The reason being that I had
already downloaded software to make VCDs and I used that.
I was unable to successfully produce an MPEG from
VideoWave4 (the editing software bundled with the DVC80)
although it has the capability. I kept getting an error
saying "not enough memory to produce file". My
solution was to download a free MPEG encoder and convert
my original AVI file to MPEG. The file size went from
over 100MB to 6MB. I then used my downloaded VCD software
to burn a VCD.
You are right though, the quality is not professional
when you play it on TV. Since the resolution is only
320x240 it comes out a little pixelated, but for a
beginner it's really not bad at all. You'd probably want
at least 640x480 for totally crisp playback on TV. You
can't make VHS tapes from the DVC80, but you can from
some of the other products from Dazzle. One side note -
on Stopmotion Pro's website they say that SMP is
incompatible with Dazzle products. I downloaded the free
trial version and it worked fine with my setup. Their
info may be outdated.
This is my first claymation movie. So far I've got the
first 43 seconds filmed. I'm only using 15 FPS. It will
end up being 4-5 minutes long. I'll post it on my website
and send you a link when it's done so you can get some
sort of idea of the quality available for the affordable
price I payed. Nick
______________________
StopMoWorks
(9/10/02 1:28:43 pm)
Reply: DVC80/Anasazi....cont'd....
Any idea why it was originally such a large file size or
does this have to do with how Anasazi captures the images
in only a certain format such as AVI which takes more
memory? That is a radical MB reduction in size but the
VideoWave4 that came with DVC80 was not able to convert
AVI to MPEG and you needed to get the additional MPEG
encoder to do it.
On dazzle site ......
www.dazzle.com/products/dvc80_gut.html
.....I do not see the videowave4 in the DVC80 bundle but
they have a different editing program called moviestar5.
Also at bottom of there specs page, it says:
Capture Formats: AVI
Convert Video to: MPEG-2, DVD, S-VCD / MPEG-1, VCD/
/AVI, DV / Real Media™, Windows Media™
Quite a number of format options, and it looks like DVC80
bundle should have been able to do conversion.
Again, seems like a great & cost-effective option for
an animation capture set-up for beginners and I am just
probing your mind, because I get queries from site that
they want something very cheap but that reasonably works
okay. LIO
______________________
Nick Ford
(9/10/02 5:29:50 pm)
Reply: DVC80/Anasazi....cont'd....
Hey LIO, the reason the AVI filesize was so big, is
because in Anasazi you can select from various
compression settings. Because I wasn't sure what was
required to make a VCD yet I wanted to have full,
uncompressed frames. This made the filesize skyrocket.
The uncompressed AVI file looks a little better on the
monitor too. If you're wondering, Anasazi can only output
to AVI, but like I said you can select various
compression settings. I'll keep you posted on this
message string. Nick
______________________
SteveG100
(10/15/02 1:44:36 am)
Reply: Anasazi saving problems
Hi all, Newcomer here figuring out anasazi. I've had a
couple of incidents where it doesnt seem to have saved my
avi file away. I suspect after I tried to change the name
in the dialogue box. Is there a trick I dont know, or am
I just be9ng clumsy. Cheers, steve G
_____________________
StopMoWorks
(10/15/02 4:12:13 pm)
Reply: Anasazi saving problems
When you say "a couple of incidents", it sounds
like the bug is not frequent. From Marc's Anasazi
download page, there is two step process to install it,
first, the main Anasazi program, then you install the
update. BTW, was curious about your set-up ..... using a
webcam or camcorder ..... what kind of connection ....
USB or other and does the onionskinning work for you?
_____________________
SteveG100
(10/16/02 1:28:43 am)
Reply: infrequent, yes
Morning, Well, I've done about ten tests so far, and
there have been two incidents where I've thought 'hang
on, wheres my movie??'. Pity both times was when I tried
to do a long set of frames.
I thought I had installed the update, I'll check.I'm
using a cheap webcam (made by Nisis) via a USB port to a
celeron 400 (dont laugh).
Onion skinning work fine with the CinePac compression
codex but doesnt work with any others, including raw
frames and DivX. Oh, and running through all the codex's
without shutting the program inbetween crashes my PC. But
I suspect that's a video codex problem.
I think at the moment, I'll put the lost files down to
inexperience. I guess its the usual rule, save often and
join the bits up.
_____________________
SteveG100
(10/18/02 3:24:31 am)
Reply: Looks smooth in Anazasi, but jerky when playing
saved file
As it says ....when I'm using the playback in Anazasi, at
30 fps it looks nice and smooth. But after savng the
file, it plays back very jerkly. Any suggestions?
Cheers,Steve
_____________________
StopMoWorks
(10/18/02 6:28:50 am)
Reply: Looks smooth in Anazasi, but jerky when playing
saved file
Well, you said you're using a cheap webcam and I wonder
if that affects playback? There was another post by Nick
Ford and he said that results from webcam was bad (image
quality) and tried a different setup, but he did not say
anything about jerky playback (with webcam). I don't know
if Nick makes frequent visits to this board.
_____________________
Nick Ford
(10/18/02 6:53:31 am)
Reply: Jerky Playback?
The only time I notice jerky playback is when I've got
several things running on my CPU at one time. If I try to
play the saved AVI file using Windows Media Player while
I've still got Anasazi and other programs open it plays
back jerky. Then again I always attribute that to my slow
processor not being able to handle multiple memory eating
programs. When I play the movie without any other
programs open it plays back fine.
A couple of side notes: I'm running a 450 Mghz AMD
processor on Win '98 SE. My movie is also only 15 FPS. If
your processor is close to the same speed as mine and
you're using 30 FPS I could definately see a little
frameskipping happening. You may also want to check your
compression settings in Anasazi. If you didn't compress
the files enough, then the processor could be having a
hard time rendering each frame. The processor is having
to skip frames in order to keep up with the speed of the
movie giving the appearance of pauses in the film or
"jerky" playback. Nick
_____________________
SteveG100
(10/18/02 10:50:53 am)
Reply: Looks like it was the codex
Hi, I used videomach to change the codex to DivX and it
now plays really smoothly, and a ten fold reduction in
file size. Thanks for replying, Steve G
END
..... edited for clarity
As you have
read in the above messages, this animation set-up using
the free Anasazi & Hi-8mm analog camcorders is okay
but is not high-end quality images. After burning your
animations onto VCD's for viewing in a DVD player
connected to the television, the image resolution will be
"a little pixelated" because of the 320 x 240
resolution limitation of the Video to USB Convertor.
Usually, the images are sharper when viewing the
animation on computer monitor (played from hard drive),
and they only start degrading when you burn or transfer
onto VCD/Video Tape. If you want to save even more money
with a starting animation set-up, you can possibly use
just a webcam or PC video cam which is a direct USB
connection to PC (you will not need Dazzle DVC80 for
webcam use) , but then the image quality will be very
inferior.
Remember,
this is a beginning set-up at minimal cost to just start
out and practice. There are other animation set-ups you
can try but will be a higher monetary investment and you
will have to research what combination of video capture
card will work with a particular animation program.
Click, StopMo Software & Tools to see other options. The digital
miniDV camcorders are the better quality option because
you have firewire connection to PC and image
quality is not lost when burning onto VCD or transferring
to video tape. With miniDV camcorder, you need a digital
video firewire capture card to be installed in your
computer.
Thanks to
Marc Spess and his generous offering of his tutorials,
informative website, downloads, etc.
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