Making a kind of 'stop motion'. A few questions.

I'm planning to do an edit of a trip to Asia. It all consists of photos, but in 'scenes' where I took photos at about 1-2 photos per second which I'd like to turn into a kind of stop-motion type video.

In terms of structure, I have all the photos organised by each city I went to. The video will also be done chronologically by city, with pauses in the video for a title of the next city.

For this, would it be best to organise the structure in my FCP library with events that correspond to each city (so each event is one city, and the media will be the photo folder of that city)? Would I then create one more event, and just use that to hold the main project file? So within the library; 5 events for each of the 5 cities, and 1 event to hold the project file.

In terms of the editing, I'd like to use the keep the entirety of the pictures (in 4:3 aspect) visible, but I still want to see a small black gap on the top and bottom of the screen. The pictures are 5184 x 3888 in resolution. How would I go about setting up the project resolution and aspect ratio? I imagine that I would setup a custom frame size of 5184 x (3888+400), with the 400 in there to add top and bottom gaps (of 200px each). Is that correct, or does this bring in the problem of 'hard baking' in letter boxes?

When importing the photos, I'd like some sets of photos to play at a faster FPS than others. Is this easy to implement?

Thanks for the help.

Whew. Lots to unpack here.

First, as far as organization goes, it's totally up to you. Personally I'd put all the photos in one event and just use keyword collections to delineate each city. I usually create one event for my timelines (projects) just to keep them separate from my media but do what makes the most sense to you.

There are also a bunch of different ways to go about creating your individual "shots". Assuming your video will be 1920x1080 (just a guess there) I would create an automation in Photoshop that takes each frame, shrinks/resizes it appropriately and combines it with a 1920x1080 black frame to create your exact specification. Then run it for all your photos with a button click. You can do it in FCPX but that takes math and math is hard.

Then in FCPX, go to preferences (editing tab) and select the duration for each still frame that you want. I would do them all the same duration and then once the timeline is solid just speed up the section you want to play faster with speed adjustment. You could do that manually if you like but that means deciding different photo frame lengths for different sections... kind of a pain.

Hopefully that gives you some suggestions to get you started. Again, many ways to skin this cat. Just do what makes the most sense to you and have fun!

Hundreds of still images that large will cause massive slowdowns.
Consider where and how you are going to watch or present your creation.
If it is meant for viewing on an HD TV screen, for example, make the project 1080p.
Assuming your project is 1080, then you don't need the images that large unless you plan to zoom in considerably.
I'd start by making copies of the still images at a smaller size - say, halve both dimensions.

And still images don't have FPS. Just decide how long the duration of each image on your timeline.
The FPS of your project is set at the time you create it (say, 25fps in Europe, 29.97 in US).

If you have Quicktime 7 Pro you can open a sequence of images and export as movie.
Gives you a lot of control afterwards.

Albo wrote: If you have Quicktime 7 Pro you can open a sequence of images and export as movie.
Gives you a lot of control afterwards.

Or use Compressor and get a little more control. But either works fine.

Thanks for the replies.

In terms of viewing, I was planning to just use my MacBook Pro to show to family and friends, but I also want to keep the photos at a fairly high resolution for when I get a 4k monitor in the future .

The thing the photos are 4:3, but I also want there to be some letter boxing at the top and bottom because I don't want the photos to display from the top to bottom of the screen. I also, during cut scenes, want to introduce the next city by putting a black frame over the photos, but cut out the name of the city from the black frame (so the colour from the photos behind comes through and therefore allows you to read the name). From what you guys have said it seems like I have a few options:

1. Make the project aspect ratio something like 4:3.2, so I have 0.1 aspect gap at the top and bottom of the screen. However there may be some artefacting between the black frames (from the cut scenes) and the black space that the screen will automatically display either side. Or is this only a problem when uploading to youtube or Vimeo where compression is involved?

2. Force a 16:9 aspect ratio, and have the vertical frame resolution slightly more than my vertical photo resolution to give it the top and bottom gap. Then this mean that if there is artefacting, then the whole of the frame will be affected and that will look better (more uniform)

Sounds like a slideshow. Quite boring for video, unless you spice things up with some Ken Burns animations. If this is just about a general, standardized framing, you could resize ONE "clip" with the transform and crop tools and paste those attributes to an adjustment layer - fastest way.

I still think you are best off resizing the pics ahead of time and then dropping them onto your timeline ready to go. It'll be easier on your system and no rendering necessary. If there are only a handful of city name slates, then make them ahead of time also (as PNGs) with the names already cut out. Then they just drop on top of whatever shot you like.

Sssssooooo... One thing that isn't clear to me, when the OP says "stop motion", does he mean he shot these stills to be stop motion, which means they're an Image Sequence needing to be converted to a movie file? Or they're just a bunch of photos, the wants to present in a "stop motion style" of viewing? Which would mean they could be treated either as an Image Sequence, or treat them as regular photos (resized before import to the Project timeline frame size)?

I had the same question as FCPX.guru.
Also, is this a sort of a timelapse.
Stop motion for me is an animated film with puppets or objects.

FCPX.guru wrote: Sssssooooo... One thing that isn't clear to me, when the OP says "stop motion", does he mean he shot these stills to be stop motion, which means they're an Image Sequence needing to be converted to a movie file? Or they're just a bunch of photos, the wants to present in a "stop motion style" of viewing? Which would mean they could be treated either as an Image Sequence, or treat them as regular photos (resized before import to the Project timeline frame size)?

Yes sorry I'm not sure what the name is. I guess you'd call it image sequencing, there's not animation.

All the photos were taken in distinct sequences.

For example, in one 'sequence' I took a photos of my friend walking in-front of me in a market every second, with the centre of the image for each photo centred on his backpack.

Another sequence was taking pictures of a statue, and moving to the right by a few feet (in a circular fashion to maintain same distance from the statue) and then taking another photo, again keeping the centre of the camera pointed at the same spot through out the sequence.

Another sequence was following a friend around a temple complex, taking photos every second and keeping him in the same spot within the frame.

So they are all distinct scenes. And when I play back the images on my camera using the scrolling wheel, it looks really good, like a fast motion video but more rustic/choppy/raw. Like a time-lapse but slower and not a static frame.

What you have is an Image Sequence. A folder that contains photos/images that are name consecutively such as 001.png, 002.png, 003.png, etc.

Yes, they play back with a stop motion effect, which is mechanically what you're doing.

So, go into Compressor to to the File menu, and select "Add Image Sequence". Select the first image in that folder. Then you can export that as a movie. You can set frame rate, frame size, etc. Then you can just work with a movie file, with that stop motion like effect, in FCPX very easily.

OR, import them into FCPX, place them all in order in a Project Timeline (Cmd-A, E). You can then, in the Timeline, do a Select All (Cmd-A), double-click the timecode readout in the Tool Bar, then just type in a duration of sections followed by a period, or a number frames, then hit enter. They'll all change to that duration, and ripple to stay next to each other (magnetic timeline magic).

Both paths have pros and cons, just use whatever works for you.