StopMotionVideo
Latest
Smoovie for Mac: A kid-friendly stop-motion video app
Smoovie is Open Planet Software's kid-friendly, stop-motion video app for Mac. It's a simple app that lets you -- or your kids -- capture photo stills, either from your photo library, your Mac's built-in camera or an external camera, and compile them into a straightforward stop-motion video. Smoovie is designed to be extremely easy to use. Open the app and create a new Smoovie. Title your Smoovie and choose whether you'd like to use your Mac's built-in camera (or an external one), or import photos from your photo library or another folder on your Mac. Choosing the camera option will present you with a large preview window with a fun, Smoovie negative film background. From there, simply start taking photos by clicking on the large red camera button underneath the preview window. Each photo you take will appear to the left of the preview window -- a basic timeline. Similarly, if you've taken a bunch of photos already, import them and Smoovie will compile them into a video ready to play. Easily adjust the order of the photos by simply moving them into place. Of course, Smoovie also lets you add photos from your library to existing Smoovie videos, too. And that's it. You're on your way to creating a stop-motion video! Smoovie has a few additional features to help make making your video even easier. First, when taking photos from a camera, the Onion Skinning Opacity shows you what your last still was with a preview of your new still overlaid in the preview window. This helps you get your next shot exactly where you want it to be in comparison to your last one, making your movie a coherent and smooth one! Additionally, create, split and merge scenes to to order your Smoovie the way you want it. When you're all done, Smoovie makes it easy to export your video to YouTube, Vimeo, iTunes or as a movie file. Because Smoovie is super-simple to use, it doesn't have slightly more advanced features like titles, filters, transitions, etc. So exporting as a movie and importing to an app like iMovie might be a good idea, just in case you really want to polish your new video before you share it with the world. Smoovie is available from the Mac App Store now for US$29.99, but you can check out the free trial from the Smoovie website.
