Stop-motion video

[P3D Gavin Stokes <gstokes@xxxxxxx>]

>>Do you know of any technic that I can find to get what are essentially
single frame exposures on a video camera?

What you're asking for is an expensive option, available only on high-end
cameras and video recorders.  The problem is the high precision required of
the transport.  In many cases, the recorder must rewind and pre-roll (play
back the few seconds of tape preceding the spot that you want to record
onto) in order to get the track laid down accurately.  This is how
computer-rendered scenes are often recorded on tape, and it's punishing on
the recorder mechanism.  Nonetheless, I seem to remember a camcorder that
had single-frame capability, and it may have been the Canon A-1 8mm.  Not
sure, though.  I don't remember if the new DVC (digital video cassette)
cameras offer single-frame shooting.  They definitely offer "snapshot" mode,
where you can take still pictures, but I don't think those snapshots are
recorded on single frames.  If they were, you could take a lot more than the
500 or so that they advertise as fitting on one tape.

I have a Panasonic "industrial" Super VHS VCR, and its edit points are
accurate to within about five frames.  I tried to do stop-action with it by
recording the scene for a second or so, stopping the tape, scanning back to
the eighth frame or so of the scene, setting up for recording again (on
pause), moving the objects in the scene, releasing Pause, and doing it all
over again.  The Panasonic mechanism usually slips backward and overwrites
about five frames, so I figured that would give me about three frames of the
eight I had retained of the previous scene.

Well, besides being incredibly time-consuming and tedious, the results were
very inconsistent and disappointing.  You'd be better off using a film
camera that gives you single-frame exposure.  Or, if you have a pretty
recent computer, you could get a video capture card and capture a frame at a
time, then play it back out of the computer to tape.  The problem there is
that you need a very fast computer, and the image will probably still stink
because of compression.

So, it looks pretty grim.  Let me know if you find a better solution.

Gavin


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