Review by M Cox

Ive always enjoyed stop-motion/claymation movies. My only previous experience in making such a film comes from an interactive museum exhibit over a decade ago. Although that previous experience was brief, it was far more time consuming and complicated than this software. Honestech makes it easy to make stop motions movies!nnTo adequately judge how intuitive a software is to use, I like to see what I can determine without looking at the manual. I was able to figure out all of the software features covered in the quick start guide. That being said, its not intended to be used by professional movie makers because it does lack the 1001+ menu controls that professionals want, but never use. If you’re like me and you just want to make some quick movies for fun, then this is all you need.

Camera Setup: My webcam was already installed so the software recognized it immediately. You can also use a DSLR camera if you want good image quality (I didn’t test that ability).nFrame Capture: Capturing a frame is as easy as pressing the spacebar, or clicking a red button. To make positioning of the next frame easier, you can use whats called Onionskin.nOnionskin: Onionskin superimposes the previous frame on top of your current camera view so that you can position your frame perfectly you can control the level of transparency.nRotoscope: Similar to Onionskin, you can open up a previously saved image to superimpose to aide in recreating a previous scene. Again, the transparency is in your control.nChroma Key: This is the green-screen effect, only for the color of your choice. You can replace the background of your movie with an image of your choice.nAudio: You can record audio or add background music.nOthers: You can add still-frame photographs or images, title scene or ending credit scene, and you can also adjust contrast or apply image filters (like black & white).nOutput: You can upload files directly to facebook or YouTube in addition to the usual save as movie options.