Hey guys welcome back today we're looking at these stop-motion plus camera
app for your Sony cameras so you can make your own stop-motion videos like
this. I'm gonna be covering the installation operation and importing the
files and I'm also gonna give you my own opinion on whether or not this is worth
your 5 dollars. What? You don't want to spend any money?
Well the touchless shutter app and the Smart Remote app are free and I have
videos on both of them I'll throw up an annotation here for you to click through
but I promise you'll learn something even if you don't end up buying the app.
Let's jump in. If you aren't familiar with stop-motion videos might I suggest
one of my favorite classic YouTube videos of all time Tony versus Paul. I
think this is the first viral YouTube video I can remember. A stop-motion video
involves taking a picture, moving something in that picture slightly and
then taking another picture without moving your camera you repeat this 24
times and that gets you one second of video. It is very tedious and requires a
lot of patience but you can get some really cool results out of it. *deep voice* "But
Brandon I already spent $10 on the time-lapse app and another $5 on that
sweet guide you made for it. This sounds like the same thing." Well it's definitely
similar for one like a time-lapse you're taking a whole bunch of images one at a
time and stitching them together to animate them. Stop-motion videos involve
a little more creativity in that you are the one forcing the action of the scene
whereas with a time-lapse it's more of a moving picture. Time lapses involve a
good sense of composition and photography in general and then taking
the same picture for 10 minutes or an hour or even a day whereas a stop-motion
video might involve more storytelling or at the very least the forcing of an
action. Like a time-lapse stop-motion videos are also stationary meaning your
camera doesn't move it stays in one place so you're gonna need a tripod even
if it's just a little one for your desk to make claymation videos.
So I'm just gonna go ahead and buy it here if you already have a PlayStation
Network account you can sign in with that if not go online and make one. I'm
one of the 12 people in the world that still plays their PS Vita so for
Christmas I asked for some PlayStation Network money. After buying Undertale - I
didn't finish it please don't spoil it - I had about nine dollars left in my wallet
that I figured I could use towards the stop Motion Plus app. So I got a little
confused with this part because I had nine dollars in my accounts wallet and
it looked like they still wanted to charge my credit card. I ended up
removing my credit card from the account and they wouldn't let me complete the
purchase without it I spent an hour with various people in customer service
trying to figure out what was going on but nobody knew and they just kept
passing me around to different people. It was four people in total. In the end I
just added my credit card back to the account assuming they would charge my
card but they ended up taking it from my wallet... So yeah you can buy it with
PlayStation Network money but you also need a credit card so it kind of defeats
the purpose. Now I know that some people have had issues installing apps through
their cameras but I had no luck trying to install it through my computer. When
you click proceed to purchase through the PlayMemories website you get
prompted to install the PlayMemories camera apps downloader or PMCA
downloader for short. I know it says PC here and I am running on a Mac but when
you click through to the "if installation fails" button the PMCA downloader for
Mac that they had me download and install ended up just being PlayMemories
Home which might be a useful tool for some of you for importing files
and such but I couldn't figure out how to download apps through it. Anyways
let's just jump into operation that's probably why you clicked on this video
in the first place. The setup is very similar to the time-lapse app.
the application top gives you three modes: standard miniature and custom.
Standard appears to put your camera in some kind of a fully automatic mode and
miniature adds a blur to make the scene look like a quote miniature model so
like always I'm gonna just shoot with the custom mode that way I can set my
shutter speed aperture ISO etc Welding custom mode you can set your camera's
mode wheel on the top or depending on what kind of camera you have 2s a P or M
and I'm not gonna go over what all of those mean but for me I shoot manual I
want to set the aperture and shutter speed so I'm gonna set it to N that
gives me full control over everything when we open up our menu there are
really only a few things that matter here file format will allow you to take
individual still images or stitch them together for you at the frame rate
options they give you one frame per second ten frames per second 24 frames
per second and 30 frames per second if you choose to shoot in one of these
movie modes you get either a 1080 or 720 HD video file in an avi format I'll be
talking more about importing these files later on if you decide to shoot still
images you'll be able to set a few extra things on the second menu page this
includes aspect ratio which you'll usually want to leave at 16 by 9 because
16 by 9 is the aspect ratio for modern video including HD video and 4k video
then you can set your quality which basically boils down to whether or not
you want to shoot RAW JPEG or both extra fine just means a higher resolution JPEG
raw images give you more options to edit in post but stop-motion videos are
usually done in a more controlled environment where you aren't worried
about things like recovering highlights like you might be worried about if you
were shooting a time-lapse made of raw photos so if I were you I would just
stick to JPEG now unlike the time-lapse app you can't get photo and video
simultaneously but why would you want still images rather than a video file
well the still image it spits out is six thousand by three thousand three hundred
and seventy six pixels when you are shooting on a 16 by 9 aspect ratio I'm
shooting with my a sixty three hundred this is nearly double the resolution of
4k video which is only 3840 pixels by 2160 pixels this means that if you shoot
with still images in extra fine quality and you stitch them together in editing
you will be able to upload a 4k video to youtube does your video need to be in 4k
well no but a lot of people like having the option the other menu items aren't
really all that important and boiled down to flash settings and other camera
settings most of which can be accessed by pressing the FN button on my camera
which i would prefer to do anyways so now that all our menu settings are
covered let's actually shoot this thing come up with your idea maybe you want to
make some model clay mold into something on its own or maybe you want your Legos
to move around and tell a story whatever you choose make sure you're in an
environment where you are in control of the light if you're shooting for a few
hours outside the lighting will definitely change and mess you up I
actually made the mistake of shooting with battery-powered lights which slowly
started to lose their power and made each shot gradually darker make sure
you're using light sources that you can plug into a wall
I want to consider a remote or a shutter release so that you're not touching your
camera making it move if you don't have one don't worry you can set the
self-timer on the bottom of the first menu page to
two seconds this will allow for a steady shot if
you're shooting at a slower shutter speed since pressing the button of your
shutter will be delayed so now all our settings in scene are set and we're
ready to start take your first picture cool now move whatever it is you're
moving and take another picture the app will show you a sort of ghost of the
last picture you took for you to reference how much you move things
around keep repeating this until you did your entire animation
when you're done press the middle button on your camera and you'll get a little
preview you get this preview even if you're only shooting stills
we're all done Congrats you made a stop-motion video but before
I go I'm gonna show you where to find all those lovely photos and videos that
we took pop your memory card into your computer if you only shot stills they
will be in the DCIM folder that you normally see your pictures if you want
to see your video files go back to your memory card select the private folder
open the folder called Sony and this will give you all of your video files
from your apps the stop-motion one is a P P underscore STP M each video is saved
in a folder with a bunch of seemingly random numbers you can go ahead and copy
that to your desktop or wherever you want to save it now I don't really want
to get too into the processing of still images into a video sequence since
you're all probably using different video editing software but it is the
same process in Premiere Pro as it is to create a time-lapse so I'll show you how
to do that really quick before you import you'll want to set with the
default framerate of the sequence will be open up preferences and under the
media tab set the indeterminate media time base to your desired framerate then
go to file import and find the stop-motion images you'll want to have
each animation or scene separated in folders click on the first image and
then in your options underneath you should see a box for image sequence you
can check that off once it's checked click import and you're good to go
so do I think this app is worth your 5 dollars well yeah if you want to make
stop-motion videos otherwise you're gonna have to find some sort of software
for your computer that allows you to connect your camera and it gives you
that ghosting effect that lets you see the previous frame I would have liked
the option to shoot video and photos simultaneously but it's not a big deal
breaker especially for some people who are just gonna post the video files to
social media sites that don't accept 4k anyways like Instagram it's just a shame
that they're kind of phasing out the PlayMemories apps I mean with the a7r
Mark 3 and the a9 and now with the a7 mark 3
according to DP review they're packaging the a7 mark 3 with computer software
called imaging edge which has three apps remote viewer and edit if that's the
direction that you want to take it Sony you're gonna piss off a lot of customers
you already went over from Canon even Canon is including a built-in
intervalometer on their newer DSLRs and although the time-lapse app isn't
perfect I'd rather use the bat than have to bring around an external
intervalometer oh and I forgot to mention the Canon intervalometer on the
60 mark ii can output a 4k video file yes Sony may have be canon to consumer
4k video but Canon beat Sony to 4k time lapse video thanks for watching if
you're new to this channel I have a bunch of other Sony camera app tutorials
you should check out I also do videos about camera gear and working as a
freelance videographer make sure you subscribe to see more coming soon and
leave a comment if you want to see a specific tutorial in the future