App to make a video from photos?

Question

I was wondering what could be a good app (with a GUI ;) ) for making a video from a bunch of photos or images, to create a time-lapse video, or a stop-motion animation, or even a video like this one.

The idea is to set a really small time between each photo, but also to be able to change this time every so often, or add some effects, to make the succession smoother in particular.

What would be perfect is a function that allows automatic cropping of the photos as well as exposure adjustment so they all have the same background and so the time-lapse video looks smoother.

I know about the slide show app "Imagination" but the interval can not go under one second.

Edit: here is my progress, also thanks to the first answer:

• I tried Luciole, it is really simple and promising, but pretty buggy, and I only could export an average video in .dv format (mpg2 and avi don't work). Apparently, it has difficulties when changing the fps.
• I also tried StopMotion: also pretty buggy, I had to go into preferences and modify the encoding commands to get a result, but it's the best result I got so far. But none of those has effects to make transitions smoother...

I tried several diaporama apps:

• Imagination doesn't handle more than 1 image per second;

• PhotoFilmStrip (repo version and latest version from website): same problem even though you can go down to 0.1 second per image, it still behaves wierdly (going back to 1 second automatically);

• Videoporama: doesn't start at all on 12.04.

Any other suggestions?

Solution 1

ffDiaporama Movie Creator seems to be another excellent option for your needs.

From the site:

ffDiaporama is an application for creating video sequences consisting of

• titles, fixed or animated.
• images or photos, fixed or animated.
• movie clips
• music

These sequences are assembled into a slide show by means of transitions of sequence to produce complete videos

The following options are available:

• Refocusing of images and photos
• Cutting of video clips
• Notes (addition of text) for images, photos, sequences and animations
• Graphical filters on the images and the videos (conversion into black and white, dust removal, equalization of colors, etc.)
• Creation of animation by zoom, rotation or Ken Burns Effect on images or photos
• Correction of the images and the videos during animations (luminosity, contrast, gamma, colors, etc.)
• Transitions between sequences with definition of the transition type, sequence by sequence.
• Addition of a background sound (wav, mp3 or ogg) with customizable effects for volume, fade in/out and passage in pause, sequence by
  sequence.
• Generation of usable videos for most current video equipment (DVD player/smartphone, multimedia box, hard drive, etc.) but also
  publishable on the main video-sharing Websites (YouTube, Dailymotion, etc.)
• Video formats from QVGA (320×240) to Full HD (1920×1080) by way of the DVD and HD 720 formats.
• Image geometry (aspect ratio) : 4:3, 16:9 or 2.35:1 (cinema)
• Possible formats for rendering : avi, mpg, mp4, mkv

Here are a couple of screenshots from my desktop:

This is the main GUI with the timeline and all the toolbars shown.

This is the "Slide Properties" Window, on which you can define certain parameters, such as the slide duration, pan, crop and other properties. You can access this feature by double-clicking on the slide when in the timeline.

You may also wish to take a look at this answer: https://askubuntu.com/a/124848/9598 on which I explain a way to do some pro-style videos with kdenlive

Good luck!

Solution 2

Another option is OpenShot video editor. It is in the repositories.

File > Import Image Sequence

Solution 3

You could try stopmotion, it's in the repository. Also Luciole which is in the repositories. Couldn't really find anything else about stop motion.

Comments

[Admin]

How about Pitvi Video Editor or Open Video Editor?

[Hilmi Erdem KEREN]

Ubuntustudio also uses stopmotion for that.

[stragu]

I tried Luciole, it is really simple and pretty buggy, and I only could export an average video in .dv format (mpg2 and avi don't work). I also tried StopMotion: also pretty buggy, I had to go into preferences and modify the encoding commands to get a result, but it's the best result I got.

[stragu]

Thank you! This is a great piece of software, by far a whole lot better than all the other ones. Very rich, and seems pretty stable. However, each slide has to stay for a minimum of 1 second, which is too much for a stopmotion video...

[dogmatic69]

Great app, took longer to read this answer than it took to create the first video.

[stragu]

I am now selecting this answer as the version 1.6 I just tried lets you use fractions of seconds, and the output video looked perfect. I could insert thousands of photos at once, and could delete transitions and set the time for all of them at once. Perfect! :)