Trying to set up a Stop Motion Animation system on Arch

phunni · 2015-10-23 15:50:56

My kids are home schooled and recently, at the local home school co-op, they did some animation work with "Hue Animation Studio", which is stop motion based software. My little girl (7) got very excited about animation and really wants to do more. Unfortunately the Hue software is Windows and Mac OS only. I did try to run it on wine, but, while it seemed to install OK, it wouldn't even run.

At the moment, it looks like the only reasonable options for stop motion animation is "Linux StopMotion" or, perhaps, "QStopmotion", which seems to be a fork of the former option. StopMotion seems like an OK choice, although not the most user friendly, but I think I could get her used to it. I haven't yet tried QStopMotion since I can't find a package and have yet to get around to trying to compile it from source. Does anyone know if it's worth the effort?

Is anyone aware of any other decent choices that would be suitable for kids?

Also, I have to think about cameras. The Hue software actually comes bundled with a camera which works with linux via the linux-uvc driver, although only at low resolution - 640x480 being the best you can get from it. It's not awesome quality, but I think she'd be satisfied, though she might get frustrated with the low resolution.

We could buy her that camera for about £20 (am UK based, obviously), but would go up to about £40 - does anyone know of a decent camera around that price range that works well on Arch?

mpan · 2015-10-23 20:46:00

PKGBUILD like this seems to work for me:

pkgname=qstopmotion
pkgver=2.0.2
pkgrel=1
arch=x86_64
depends=('ffmpeg' 'gstreamer' 'gphoto2' 'qt4')
makedepends=('cmake')
source=('hg+http://hg.code.sf.net/p/qstopmotion/code')
sha256sums=('SKIP')

build() {
    cd code
    hg up v2.0.2
    cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH="$pkgdir/usr" .
    make
}

package() {
    cd code
    make install
}

(note: I'm not intenting to maintain this package; the PKGBUILD is provided as a guidance)

As for the camera: are you sure that the HueHD is actually capable of providing more than 640×480? I'm not accusing the manufacturer of anything, as I don't have the device, but it would be a waste of your money to buy another camera without a true need. The market is flooded with cameras specified with higher resolutions, but actually providing 640×480 that is later rescaled by the driver to fake higher image sizes¹. It's not like UVC support under Linux is flawless, but quite often if it says 640×480, it's not lying. Multiple reviews of the camera already point out that 640×480 is the real capability of the device. If that's true, then just rescale your daughter's movie after it's made, using — for example — ffmpeg. Unfortunely I can't tell for sure. You may check (`v4l2 --list-formats`) if MJPEG is supported and try to switch to it, but that's the only idea I can deliver.
____
¹ This is the sole purpose of such "driver".

phunni · 2015-10-23 22:09:31

As far as I can make out, the camera can only do 640x480. The one I've been testing with is actually borrowed (perhaps I should've mentioned that), hence my wondering if I can actually get something better at that price range - something with a better quality camera and, perhaps, capable of a better resolution.

mpan · 2015-10-23 23:28:11

Unfortunely I can't provide much help on this topic .

Until someone has a good camera in this price range and can recommend it, there are two ways:

Find reviews for cameras from this list. Well done, high quality reviews, with the actual performance tested.
Take a laptop with Arch installed to a shop and test cameras yourself.

phunni · 2015-10-24 13:07:32

BTW - thanks for the PKGBUILD. It worked really well for me.

JohnBobSmith · 2015-10-26 02:01:59

Sticking to the traditional definition of stop motion animation being "take a photo, move the prop (clay for instance), take another photo", then why would you need special software or a special camera for that? When I did clay animation in my digital media course, I had a camera with a tripod and a set for the figures, with a simple cut open box as the background. 500 photos later, I imported all of them into a movie editor (in my case, Final Cut Pro), made sure they are in the right order and right duration, and I had my project. All that was needed was an SD card to go from camera to PC.

With that in mind, wouldn't any camera or any video editor work? I know of a few video editors for Linux, though the only one I've attempted was kdenlive and I didn't bother much with that. I had no reason to. I'd just work on my projects at school. Now obviously kid-friendly may or may not be on the minds of software developers. Though using a video editor at the most basic level can't possibly be that hard.

All in all, I'm not sure what the purpose of the "Hue Animation Suite" would be, nor do I see the point in buying a new camera other than the fact that the resolution is not optimal on your current one. Therefore, my advice is to use what you have and find any suitable video editor to glue all the photos together.

Hopefully your daughter will be able to enjoy the digital arts as much as I have.

mpan · 2015-10-26 18:16:04

I could do this even using only ffmpeg (nothing more is actually needed for that), but I believe OP searches for the software because his daughter is just 7 years old. Terminal is not appealing to kids, in general. Also it's easier to work with software that provides a diff with the previous frame or allows you to quickly preview the movie.

Last edited by mpan (2015-10-26 19:56:01)

phunni · 2015-10-26 18:28:28

That's exactly right. She'll find it much easier with software that has onion skinning.
If it were me, I could do it the cli way, but, although I'll teach her that one day, she isn't ready for it yet.

Arch Linux

#1 2015-10-23 15:50:56

Trying to set up a Stop Motion Animation system on Arch

#2 2015-10-23 20:46:00

Re: Trying to set up a Stop Motion Animation system on Arch

#3 2015-10-23 22:09:31

Re: Trying to set up a Stop Motion Animation system on Arch

#4 2015-10-23 23:28:11

Re: Trying to set up a Stop Motion Animation system on Arch

#5 2015-10-24 13:07:32

Re: Trying to set up a Stop Motion Animation system on Arch

#6 2015-10-26 02:01:59

Re: Trying to set up a Stop Motion Animation system on Arch

#7 2015-10-26 18:16:04

Re: Trying to set up a Stop Motion Animation system on Arch

#8 2015-10-26 18:28:28

Re: Trying to set up a Stop Motion Animation system on Arch

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