It has been 5 days. Yes, that is a long time to take on this project. A lot more than I expected. I thought the majority of my problems with this software were because I was unfamiliar with it. After working and working to try get get what I wanted out of the software I finally gave up.
My first move was to get the manual. I figured any questions I might have would be answered by it. I was wrong. Things it didn't explain that would have been helpful:
-How to join clips
-How to put sound to more than one clip, when you are using multiple clips in your movie (which they suggest you do) and you have one long sound clip
-How to remove audio that you have uploaded. Not from the clips, but from the import queue.
-How to resize your stills
I had several issues while working with this. Again, I am probably trying to do more than it was meant for, but still it was frustrating. As I do not currently have the ability to capture pictures directly into the computer, importing stills was all I could do. As I used my iPad to take the stills, I had no options as to the size or dimensions of the stills. Because they were so large it took a long time to import. I expected this. It would be a lot to ask of any program to make that large of a data import go quickly.
I chose to set the movie frame rate at 24 fps. It is easier to calculate movement with an even number of frames per second. That is something I am still struggling with. When you see the video you will see stilted movement and fluttriness. That is due more to my learning curve for calculating movement than it is the software. Still, 24 fps seemed to work out ok.
Because I plan to break my videos up into scenes, I made more than one clip to test the software's continuity abilities. The first clip is from the TMBG Istanbul video I have been playing with, the second is just a little thing I shot to play around with. I recorded myself playing a simple chord progression on the ukelele for my sound. I am glad, because if I had chosen dialog getting the sound to match would have been way more difficult than it already was.
The first issue I encountered was getting the clips to join up. It isn't clear how to do that. My idea was to take my two clips, put them back to back then add the sound. That didn't work. There is no way to do that. So then I tried to add the sound to the first clip, but then it made the first clip twice as long with a long pause of background, then it ran the second clip. That is where I ran into the next problem. There is no time ticker anywhere. I had no idea how long each clip was exactly. My next idea was to cut the sound into the right length for the clips. Makes sense. Didn't work. I tried exporting each clip separately to figure out how long I needed to make each audio clip. It was off by 4 seconds. When I cut the audio and imported it into AI, each clip was too short. At that point I ran out of patience and just moved the audio so there was a few seconds of silence at the beginning and a few at the end. Having instructions on how to do this would have helped a lot. Having a counter so I knew exactly how long my clips were and how much audio I needed to fill the space would have helped a lot.
I have a bunch more I can say about it, but I think I am going to end it here. I was disappointed. I expected more from Aardman. At the very least I expected to be able to find answers to my questions and not spend 5 days with frustrating trial and error. I also already stated some things in my last post, and as I did not find answers I will just leave it alone. I am glad it was a free trial and I didn't waste money on it.
So here is my final video:
My first move was to get the manual. I figured any questions I might have would be answered by it. I was wrong. Things it didn't explain that would have been helpful:
-How to join clips
-How to put sound to more than one clip, when you are using multiple clips in your movie (which they suggest you do) and you have one long sound clip
-How to remove audio that you have uploaded. Not from the clips, but from the import queue.
-How to resize your stills
I had several issues while working with this. Again, I am probably trying to do more than it was meant for, but still it was frustrating. As I do not currently have the ability to capture pictures directly into the computer, importing stills was all I could do. As I used my iPad to take the stills, I had no options as to the size or dimensions of the stills. Because they were so large it took a long time to import. I expected this. It would be a lot to ask of any program to make that large of a data import go quickly.
I chose to set the movie frame rate at 24 fps. It is easier to calculate movement with an even number of frames per second. That is something I am still struggling with. When you see the video you will see stilted movement and fluttriness. That is due more to my learning curve for calculating movement than it is the software. Still, 24 fps seemed to work out ok.
Because I plan to break my videos up into scenes, I made more than one clip to test the software's continuity abilities. The first clip is from the TMBG Istanbul video I have been playing with, the second is just a little thing I shot to play around with. I recorded myself playing a simple chord progression on the ukelele for my sound. I am glad, because if I had chosen dialog getting the sound to match would have been way more difficult than it already was.
The first issue I encountered was getting the clips to join up. It isn't clear how to do that. My idea was to take my two clips, put them back to back then add the sound. That didn't work. There is no way to do that. So then I tried to add the sound to the first clip, but then it made the first clip twice as long with a long pause of background, then it ran the second clip. That is where I ran into the next problem. There is no time ticker anywhere. I had no idea how long each clip was exactly. My next idea was to cut the sound into the right length for the clips. Makes sense. Didn't work. I tried exporting each clip separately to figure out how long I needed to make each audio clip. It was off by 4 seconds. When I cut the audio and imported it into AI, each clip was too short. At that point I ran out of patience and just moved the audio so there was a few seconds of silence at the beginning and a few at the end. Having instructions on how to do this would have helped a lot. Having a counter so I knew exactly how long my clips were and how much audio I needed to fill the space would have helped a lot.
I have a bunch more I can say about it, but I think I am going to end it here. I was disappointed. I expected more from Aardman. At the very least I expected to be able to find answers to my questions and not spend 5 days with frustrating trial and error. I also already stated some things in my last post, and as I did not find answers I will just leave it alone. I am glad it was a free trial and I didn't waste money on it.
So here is my final video:
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