• Stop Motion Pro Review
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• Platform PC, Mac
• price £429.99 plus VAT
• contact Stop Motion Pro
pros Good compatibility with digital SLRs; high-resolution workflow; intuitive shooting; helpful support.
cons Basic ChromaKey and Paint tools; fairly pricey.
rating  

Most professional stop-motion animation – from commercials work to feature films – is now shot using digital SLR cameras. We tested Studio HD’s compatibility with digital SLRs using a Canon EOS 450D, which is affordable but provides top-quality images. Before the shoot it’s a good idea to set all the camera’s controls (exposure mode, focus, white balance, auto power-off and so on) to their default settings.

You’re not limited to Canon SLRs, though – you can also use webcams, video cameras and Nikon SLRs. In the Capture Settings window you dictate the working resolution. The 450D’s smallest capture preset is 2,256 x 1,504 pixels – well above HD resolution and more than adequate
for most projects.

In the main Stop Motion Pro window, you get to see the Live View feed coming straight from the digital SLR. The preview image looks good so you’re ready to shoot a few high-resolution captures.

New to version 7 is the DOP Control window. This is effectively a testing zone, where you can capture test images and scrutinise them closely using new histogram and zebra checking tools. You can set curves and also adjust the camera’s exposure settings here.

Stills from Chris Gavin’s project Txt Island. Watch the full spot here.

When you start animating, the main controls for capturing images are quick to grasp and highly intuitive. The basic principle is: move the model, shoot, move the model, shoot. Given the repetitive and physical nature of this work, learning the keyboard shortcuts soon becomes a real timesaver.

One of Stop Motion Pro’s genuinely standout features is its looping functionality. A lot of animation time is spent reviewing what has already been shot – and Stop Motion Pro offers a pleasing variety of looping options to facilitate this. Looping with the Include Live tool is especially effective.

The PC will continually loop the playback of the stored frames followed by a glimpse of the current Live View frame. With this feature, the animator can concentrate on animating the model, instead of fiddling around with the playback controls.

When you capture and review your frames, most of the time you’re seeing the lower-resolution images grabbed from the camera’s Live View feed. But whenever a frame is captured, Studio HD is simultaneously saving the images as uncompressed TIFF or Raw files at the full resolution specified in the Capture Settings.

You can toggle between the Live View sequence and a down sampled representation of the Captured Fames sequence at any time. If you need to remove unwanted frames or improve the timing of your scene, open the Editor to cut, copy, paste, hide and re-order the captured frames. Hiding allows you to remove one or more frames from the sequence in a reassuringly non-destructive way.

The Editor window presents thumbnails of all of the captured frames in a grid view. This display may seem confusing from time to time, but the tools offer the necessary functionality to make any timing changes that are required.

Version 7 introduces a new sidebar interface which offers a stack of tabbed panels through which you can access all of the application’s tools and settings more easily.

Under the Tools tab are nine buttons leading to some of Studio HD’s additional functions; Audio Sync, Frame Painter, Rotoscope, Slate, Timeline, Chroma Key, Rig Removal, DOP Control and Notes.

For the most part, these tools perform as you might expect but a couple of them – namely Frame Painter and Chroma Key – are pretty basic, particularly considering that this is aimed at professionals. Expect to perform any advanced keying, matting or painting work using a compositing tool such as After Effects.

The new Rig Removal tool allows the user to nominate a captured frame as a clean plate and offers a cloning brush for the removal of the unwanted rigs. Again, this is a fairly basic tool – but it’s effective enough for simpler wire-removal tasks and a welcome addition to the package.

When your shot is finished, you can export the images either as movie files or frame sequences, and most of the popular formats are available. There are numerous output options to choose from, encompassing everything from direct YouTube upload to uncompressed Raw files.

With version 7, Stop Motion Pro Studio HD feels robust, while its core tools for shooting and testing animation are effective. It has good communication with the Canon camera, and the integration of the Live View is highly usable.

A couple of the minor tools could be more developed, but for the business of effective animation capture Stop Motion Pro delivers.

I Hope you now have a clear view on what to buy! No? Then this might just settle this decision!