Digital Commons at Penn State

This tutorial will show you how to import a number of sequential image files so you can create animations at various frame rates.

Download Sample Files

Video normally plays back at 30 fps (frames per second). This means that 1 minute of video consists of 1800 individual frames (30 x 60 sec). For this workshop, we are going to create an animated image sequence at 10 fps. 1 minute at this rate will need 600 images.

1. Final Cut Pro lets you set a default video size for imported images. We need to set things so that an image is imported to play as 3 individual video frames. This will give us a playback frame rate of 10fps.
To set this import size go to the top menu and select user preferences from the Final Cut Pro menu.

2. Select the editing tab (second item) in the user preferences and change Still/Freeze Duration to 00:00:00:03. Click OK.

3. Import the folder of images. These should be sequentially named and 720X480.

Sequences of still images can be imported by QuickTime Player and turned into movies. This can be used for assembling stop-motion animation projects.

1. In the File Menue of QuickTime Player, Select Open Image Sequence.

2.Select the first image in you image sequence.

3.Choose a framerate. 10 Frames Per Second will play an image 3 times and move to the next one in the sequence. A one minute movie at this rate will require 600 still images.

4. Once the movie has been imported, it will have to be resized to 640 X 480. Select Show Movie Properties from the QuickTime Player Window Menu Items.

5. Select the Video Track and Visual Settings. Change the scaled size to 640 X 480. You may need to uncheck "Preserve Aspect Ratio" if your images are not in a 4:3 aspect ratio. You also need to click the checkbox for High Quality.

This Tutorial Will explain how to select and save your images, burn your images to a CD or send them too iDVD

1) First select Library from the options on the left to view your imported images.

2) Now you want to select your images, you can do this by holding down the apple button and clicking each of your images, When an image is selected it will appear with a blue outline.

3) If you want to save your images to your U drive, you will want to go to “File” and Select “Export.” Then you can just choose export, when you do iPhoto will ask you where you would like to save the files, Here you can choose your U drive.

4) If after selecting your images you want to burn them to a CD, go to “Share” and select “Burn” If you haven’t put a blank CD into the iMac’s CD drive iPhoto will prompt you for one now.

This tutorial will explain how to download the images from the Canon Power Shot Still Camera to the iMac. (Warning this process will delete the images from the Still Camera, make sure that you have a CD or other device to store your images when you are done.)

1) Make sure that you have the Camera plugged into the computer and turned on.

2) Open up iPhoto on the Mac, this can be found in the applications folder on the iMac.

3) If the camera was turned on before you opened iPhoto it should take you right to the “Ready to import” screen, if it doesn’t Select the camera out of the list on the left hand side.