Stop Motion Editing 101
📣 I’ll say it again louder for the people in the back: editing is just as important as shooting. Any professional videographer, photographer and graphic designer will agree with this (if you’re a pro and you don’t agree, I’m willing to argue my case all day with you lol). If you’re not convinced… take a look at this before and after of the difference stop motion editing can make!
In this blog post, we’re going to show you our tricks to stop motion editing using our app, Life Lapse. Our simple to use video editor allows you to edit frame-by-frame in the timeline of your stop motion video to create a seamless, professional-looking video using your phone and our app. If you’re just getting started with stop motion, we recommend checking out our Introduction to Stop Motion before you move onto stop motion editing.
Learn Stop Motion Editing
Stop motions are created by piecing together single images at a high speed to create an animation or movement. After you’ve captured all of your photos to create your video, you’ll head over to our stop motion editor. Like traditional stop motion editing softwares, you’ll see a frame-by-frame view of all the images or clips you took from our in-app camera or have uploaded into our app. The frames will appear in chronological order and here is where the magic happens ✨
Editing frame-by-frame in your stop motion timeline
We offer two views of our timeline, both frame-by-frame and in chronological order. When you are in the editor, you will see your clips along the bottom of the editor but you can also view all of your clips in the grid view located at the top. The difference between the two is that the grid view allows you to align your photo compared to the previous clip with our Ghost feature. Plus, we prefer this view when looking at all of our clips together.
Your timeline will allow you to:
Select clips
Freeze a clip up to 3 seconds. Freezing a clip will create a pause effect of that clip when played at a high speed
Duplicate a clip and have it appear in the next frame or last frame of your video. Duplicating your frames to appear in the next frame will also produce the pause effect. Duplicating your frame to appear in the last frame allows you to recreate movements without the need of capturing the movement all over again with your camera
Move frames to different spots within your timeline
Download your clips to your phone (we’re all about repurposing your content so use those photos or videos in as many ways as you can!)
Delete clips - any clips that shows your hands in the frame moving your object? No problem - simply delete them out!
Now in your grid view, there’s some extra magic in there to creating seamless stop motions. Here, you can click into any photo and align the photo using our ghost feature. You have the option to align it with the first photo in your project or the previous photo in the sequence.
Brightness, Contrast, Saturation and Warmth
As you would normally edit your photos and videos post-production, you can edit the brightness, contrast, saturation and warmth easily as our app allows you to adjust all your clips at once for a seamless video.
Brightness - Adjusting the brightness in video editing makes your video brighter or darker when you use the slider in-app to edit your video.
Contrast - Contrast is the visual ratio of different tones where the a high contrast will pop more, show textures & shadows and provides a harder look. Lowering the contrast will provide a lighter, dreamy look.
Saturation - Saturation is the intensity and purity of a color in your images that make up your stop motion video. A high saturation creates more intensity while the lower saturation becomes more gray.
Warmth - The warmth allows you to adjust the color temperature. The higher the warmth, the more yellow your video will look while the lower the warmth, the cooler/blue it will look.
Adjusting the speed in your stop motion animation
Speed plays a HUGE part in stop motion! Since a stop motion is a video created out of a series of single photos, increasing the speed will create your animation and movement. The slower the speed, the more it’ll look like a slideshow. In the example below, both videos are create with the same amount of photos and the only difference is the speed!
Resizing and optimizing your video for social media
Our app was specifically designed for small business owners, creators and influencers to create eye catching content for social media so OBVIOUSLY we got you when it comes to making it easy to resize for whichever social media channel you are sharing on. Below are the aspect ratios that we have in our app which is the ratio of the width to the height of your stop motion video along with best uses for social media but we also have other ratios for whatever you might need your video for.
9:16 - Instagram Stories, IGTV, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok
4:5 - Instagram feed, Pinterest
1:1 - This is a square which is great for your Instagram feed, Facebook photo, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. Something to note is that Twitter requires 16:9 for photos but can be 1:1 when it comes to video!
16:9 - YouTube, Facebook cover, Facebook photos
Other: 10:16, 5:4, 16:10
Tip: If you are capturing for YouTube or a platform that requires landscape, we recommend capturing your video horizontally so that you don’t end up having to crop out part of your video.
Boomerang
You can Boomerang your entire video which will play your video forward and backward in a loop. The video on the left is not boomerang’d whereas the one on the right is.
Tilt & Adjust
While we have a ton of grids to help you line up your objects with our in-app camera that was designed for making stop motion videos, sometimes things just happen LOL. Our tilt & adjust feature lets to find the perfect angle up to -45 to +45 degrees.
This is also the feature where you can crop anything out. Pinch in and out to zoom to your desired crop.
Filters
We wouldn’t be an app made for making creative content for social media without filters effects! We have over 10 filters that you can apply to your entire project.
Reverse
This editing feature is very important for stop motion because sometimes it’s just easier to film backwards to tell your story. The reverse feature will automatically play your project in reverse from your sequence of clips so that you don’t have to rearrange them for a backwards effect! Here is an example of a video where we used the reverse function - with all the little pieces that made up the 20K, it was easier to create the 20K lettering and remove each sequin one by one instead of adding to it.
Rotate
Need to rotate your video? No problem. It can rotate 90 degrees at a time.
Music & Sound
We have three options for you to add audio clips to your stop motion animations.
Browse our library of over 100+ music clips and sound effects to apply to your video that are royalty-free aka use them however you want and for however long you want!
You can also import your own non-cloud music from iTunes directly into the app. If uploading your own music, be sure to check out the music guidelines to make sure you have the appropriate license to use it.
Record your own audio
Here you have it! Stop motion editing 101 to take your creative content to the next level. If you have any questions about video editing, feel free to leave them below!
