Hi All,
I am facing a problem while capturing frames for stop motion movie. I am unable to remove the background from the images i have captured. Is there any software which could do this automatically for me? I still have a lot of shooting left and it will be helpful if you could tell me a software which could remove the background while i am capturing the frames itself?
Thanks,
Abhinav
If you have a flat colored background, Adobe After Effects and Premier both have chromakey effects. I have a copy of Adobe Premier Elements and it has a chromakey feature on it too
Hope that helps.
KalEl118
Thanks a lot KalEl118 ... I am actually using the just released version of Premiere Elements3.0. It has support for Stop motion in it. It looks cool ... hmmm ... but it doesn't have anything to remove non flat background. Do you think any other software provides something like this. And what do the animation studios usually do to remove the background. Is it a post production step or can we get rid of the background at the time of capturing frames itself .
Thanks a lot again,
Abhinav
Here is a good read: http://www.apple.com/pro/film/lucas/
Thanks Rasheed ... it was indeed a very interesting article. But i have still not understood if there is any way to remove the background while i am capturing the frames itself.
Thanks
Abhinav
This would only be of partial help, but once I had to go help a relative who was a teacher get the school's camera live on their computer so they could tape their school news. There were options within that digital camcorder's packaged-in software to do automatic background replacement, and the physical camera itself had a mode for taking a frame at a time. A camcorder like that is going to be less than 150 bucks today. Maybe start checking feature lists?
Thanks a lot ScatteredLogical ... could you please tell some thing more about the camera u mentioned in your previous post something like its make and also about the packaged-in software ... what did it do ... was it a simple video editing software or something else
That's why it's only of partial help; I don't actually know the make or model. By its design I'm almost positive it was a JVC or possibly a HandyCam because my sister had the latter and I thought I remembered the logo of the former.
It was simple software...It could -do- a lot, but it was simple. They had a small beige roll-down screen in that room inside the library, and if you aimed it at that, and turned on the little preview screen in the software, there was a button that you hit and clicked at the roll-down screen in the video (presumably to choose a color)...then you'd hit a button and it would pop up a dialog box to toy with the sensitivities, allow you to pick the background images from a file, etc. It was free, belonged packaged with the camera, and came in a second CD separation from the installation/drivers...
I haven't done this because I just use keying but it should work if absolutely need it done. It is pretty labor intensive though.
Put your source material in premier elements, I assume you can export as an image sequence from there ( Render as PNGs or something lossless). I use after effects and I don't know premier but I figure it probably lets you render as images. Bring each image into photoshop and copy it onto another layer, then delete the background layer, use the wand to delete the bgrd, make sure anti-aliasing is on. Minimize them and when you are done run a batch operation to save them ( look up how in the help menu). Try to figure out how to use "Actions" in photoshop to make this process faster. Then re-import them into premier as an image sequence.
Or alternately you could look online for a keying filter for photoshop ( I don't know if they exist) then create an action using that keying filter and then use that action to batch process each image ( again you can find out how to do this using the help menu). That would be much faster.
Hope that helps.
Oh and if you can avoid it don't shoot interlaced frames, shoot progressive frames, I believe you can do that on many digital camcorders by using the 24p function. Otherwise it won't chromakey as easily.
Instead of buying a different camera consider purchasing After Effects. It's a wonderful program that will open up many options for you in the stop motion work you are doing. It's like your cellphone... you'll be amazed you ever lived without it.
I would not choose photoshop for this purpose. It needs to be downloaded, installed, and moreover-it is quite difficult to use. Now, for this purpose, the most ideal option would be automatically remove background. A couple of clicks and you're done!