Stop motion animation of moving wine bottles, Gallo White Zinfandel Rose.

Please select 720p HD at the bottom of the video

As of December 5th 2008 this video is now available to play in HD mode as well as High Quality

I created this video to test out YouTubes’ new widescreen mode that was launched on 24th November 2008. Up until then all videos were in 4:3 aspect ratio but now you can use 16:9 aspect ratio which gives you more room to play with BUT the down side of this is that most cameras are NOT widescreen so this means most peoples videos will have thick black bars down the left and right sides of them. Shame Youtube have not sorted this out as it looks rubbish on most peoples videos now.

I encoded this video at in Sony Vegas 8 at 1280×720 which is not the best size as this makes the files huge so not something I would do for longer videos.
To give you an idea of size this 38 second clip is 24.7Mb
I will have to experiment to see whats best.

NOTE
If you click the fullscreen icon and you have thick black bars at the TOP and BOTTOM of the video then this means your monitor/screen resolution is NOT widescreen.
You WILL get thin (5mm at 1280×800 on a 15.4″ screen) black borders top/bottom as Youtube insist on having the play bar in view which means you cant actually have fullscreen widescreen.

To get fullscreen widescreen you have to have a 16:9 monitor, simple as that.
You then must also select a widescreen resolution to match it, if you don’t do both of these then you will not get widescreen in fullscreen mode.

Video Description:
I filmed this using a Canon Ixus 430. I filmed this in my kitchen. It was an overcast day and I had the blinds shut to keep a constant light level but the sun came out at times, which is why the lighting is not constant.

The main “grid of wine” sequence is made from 35 Photographs, 70 if you also include the arrival of the wine bottles.
This took 16 minutes to create.

Buy It

The “set of two” bottles at 0:12 is made from 46 photographs plus another 20 for the rotating bottles sequence at 0:24
This took 9 minutes to create.

I really enjoy making stop motion videos, its so easy and quick to create something like this. People seem to think it takes hours and days just to create a few seconds of animation.
This video is made from a few small seqences that have been looped, reversed and repeated.
The most dificult thing is remembering what item you need to move next as you forget whats happening frame to frame. You can always use Onion Skinning to help you with this to some extent.

My tips for making a good looking stop motion sequence :
1) You must use a tripod and make sure all the controls on it are fully tightened up and the legs are fully extended out on a solid surface.
2) Make sure you have room to work without any chance of catching the camera or tripod legs.
3) Do not touch the camera at all to take photos, use the IR remote control or better still use some remote software to do this for you.
4) Make sure the lighting is constant and even.
5) Lock the focus and Exposure on the camera.
6) Check each frame you take to make sure you have not caught your hands in the shot.

What do you think of my little video creation?

For those interested the wine is a Gallo White Zinfandel Rose Produced by Ernest & Julio.

The music is Lounge by Workbench.

http://www.drinkaware.co.uk/