Alan
These settings - new to Smart Edit 7 - are both cool. Yes, they are not something most of us will use every day but provide some new neat options for specific effects.
The Stop M. (Stop Motion - Animation) function is I believe the one you asked about above.
And yes, it can be used to create a stop motion animation sequence! To use it,
1. Connect live camera
2. Select 'Record M.' from Record menu options
3. I recommend going down to fastest Frame rate, which is 1.5
4. Under Display, I favor the 'loop' setting which toggles back and forth from the last recorded frame to the live source - this is perfect for animation as you can see where your object/subject was in the last frame! (If you select 'live' it simply shows the live camea)
5. Once you are ready to record a frame, click the record button and it will record that one frame.
6. You then adjust your subject/scene and so on, and so on, and so on.
Doing this even once for a short video gives you a great respect for the patience of those who have done this for a full feature like Nick Parks/Aardman Animation (Wallace and Gromit) or my all time favorite clay-mation short film 'Creature Comforts' which you can view online here:
http://www.atom.com/funny_videos/creature_comforts/
This setting produces an animation sequence, automatically combining these frames together for you - as long as you stay in this window and do not go back out to the Edit screen.
However - if you do/need to (like a break in your production schedule, etc.) there is another cool option that developers gave us here -- the 'Select scene' button. Clicking this button allows you to 'join' the animation you are above to create onto the end of a previous scene in your Scene bin!
I have done a couple of animations with this setting and they are fun.
Hope that helps!
Regards,
Chet
