04-17-2012, 09:43 PM

Pretty straightforward question:
Is there any way to shorten clips in iMovie shorter than .1 seconds?

If not, is there any free movie editing software for the mac that can do this? (even if it's lower quality than iMovie. I used to work it Windows Movie Maker, which would let me make clips as short as .07 seconds, so I'm not really looking for a very high quality software. As long as it doesn't lag as much as WMM! lol)

04-18-2012, 06:10 AM

At that rate of clipping, are you making a stop-motion movie, or are you just trying to invoke seizures?

04-18-2012, 06:21 AM

Seizures.
Stop motion animation. I used to use Movie Maker for it, but that was about five or six years ago, and I have since obtained a Mac, and I'm getting back into it recreationally. I've used iMovie for other things and like it, but won't let me clip da clips, if you know what I mean.

04-18-2012, 06:42 AM

Set your clips to the shortest time possible...render your movie re-import the movie back into iMovie and then speed up the whole by a hair...or until desired...

04-18-2012, 07:04 AM

Originally Posted by codda

Set your clips to the shortest time possible...render your movie re-import the movie back into iMovie and then speed up the whole by a hair...or until desired...

That would work if I had every frame the same length, but only some sequences I put together have to be at the unreachable length, while others have to match up with certain audio, and if I render the movie and import it, the coloring gets all funky and doesn't match the rest of the frames that weren't part of the clip I rendered.

Does anyone know of any alternative software that might allow what I'm looking for?

04-18-2012, 10:07 AM

Can you reimport and then split the clips as needed...? Maybe try a trial version of FCPX..?

04-18-2012, 06:35 PM

My problem is that, say I have a scene in which the frames need to be shorter than .1s, but then the next scene includes inconsistent length frames to match up with dialogue or what-have-you. I can't put them all in one movie file and export it and reimport it without having a heck of a mess to clean up.

How about some flipbookish program? Anyone know of anything like that? Where I import my own image files, control their length (so they can be less than .1 seconds)?

I'll look at FCPX.

04-18-2012, 09:10 PM

I vote FCPX. It's awesome true professional grade software. It got a lot of complaints from working pros when introduced since it was so different from prior versions. Which made it act like a super-duper version of iMovie. So for regular folks the drawback is not there, in fact it is an *advantage* as you'll be productive faster. This makes it easy for the casual to take the leap, especially considering the fair price for what you get.

04-19-2012, 05:34 AM

Maybe this will help?

Boinx iStopMotion: Mac Stop Motion and Time Lapse Software

04-20-2012, 08:33 PM

Originally Posted by chas_m

Maybe this will help?

Boinx iStopMotion: Mac Stop Motion and Time Lapse Software

I tried the demo for that. Not what I was looking for, but getting closer! lol.

I also tried a demo for FCPX. It wasn't behaving for me. I might try it again, tho.