• GHB
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Topic: How to get optimal quality with a c920 and iStopmotion

It really disappoints me to have animated something for hours and then export it to find out it's terrible, absolutely terrible quality. I'm sick and tired of this webcam problem I've been having for over a year now where I get horrible quality out of it. I've seen many other films using the same camera as I do and those films look amazing!!! I don't want to even think about saving up for a $500 or more DSLR, especially when I supposedly have the "best brickfilming webcam thats out there." There just has to be a solution to getting the best out of a c920 using iStopmotion.

I would appreciate any help that you guys may have. Thanks.

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Re: How to get optimal quality with a c920 and iStopmotion

Have you tried putting more light on to your set? Webcams quality declines rapidly in low light conditions. Try getting more lamps and brighter light onto the set and into the camera.
The phrase is "Lights, Camera, Action" in that order for a reason. mini/wink

Last edited by Cartoonkid98 (February 9, 2014 (09:57am))

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  • GHB
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  • Location: USA
  • Joined: March 21, 2012

Re: How to get optimal quality with a c920 and iStopmotion

Cartoonkid98 wrote:

Have you tried putting more light on to your set? Webcams quality declines rapidly in low light conditions. Try getting more lamps and brighter light onto the set and into the camera.
The phrase is "Lights, Camera, Action" in that order for a reason. mini/wink

Actually, it seems like the more light I put on the set, the worse it gets. Is there anybody who has a c920 and iStopMotion that could tell me how they encode their videos?

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  • Joined: December 26, 2008

Re: How to get optimal quality with a c920 and iStopmotion

Does iStopmotion not allow you to export uncompressed footage? If the camera quality looks fine in the preview but the final video looks poor, that sounds less like a camera problem and more a matter of video compression (though you should also check to make sure that the capture settings are at least equivalent to the preview settings if iStopmotion handles them separately). If you do determine that compression is the problem, Google should yield a list of decent codecs that will give you optimal quality without the enormous filesize that comes with raw footage.

  • Joined: November 26, 2011

Re: How to get optimal quality with a c920 and iStopmotion

I've found that exporting screws up the quality of the animation, so I've figured out to save it and used that file. So what I do is when I finish animating, I save it, and use what iStopmotion has saved.

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Re: How to get optimal quality with a c920 and iStopmotion

GHB wrote:

Actually, it seems like the more light I put on the set, the worse it gets.


My thoughts exactly. Or rather, the quality doesn't get worse, it's just that the image gets extremely blown out and ugly.

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