Monkey Jam is a very popular frame capturing software for stop motion animation. To use Monkey Jam can be slightly confusing. Here is how to get Monkey Jam up and running.

When you first run Monkey Jam the screen will look like the picture to the right. You will need to edit some settings on Monkey Jam to make it work properly. At the top of the program click Setting -> Preferences… This will open up a new window. In the General tab you will want to change the FPS to whatever frame rate you film your brickfilms with. You can also change the Default Storage Folder to folder you want all the files saved to.

Next you want to go to the Capture tab and edit the following settings. Change Capture Mode to Stop Motion and then change Image Hold to 1. Also change Numbering to Frame and adjust Image Format to Png. Now click OK.

Now you need to open a new layer. Click File -> New Xps or use keyboard shortcut Ctrl+n. Name the layer and select where you would like the images to be stored. Now it is time to start capturing frames. Click on the camera icon at the top of the program or press F6 on the key board. A new window should pop up and you can begin capturing your frames. If you want to replace a frame type in the frame number in the capture window and capture the new frame.

To preview your film close the capture window and click the TV icon or hit F7. This will open a preview window click on the forward arrow and the animation will began to play.

Now to render out the animation there is a couple of ways. The first way is to go to the folder where the images were saved and use a video editing program to turn the images to a video. The second way is to click the film reel icon. This will open up a Export Movie window. Give the file a name be sure to leave .avi at the end of the files name. Select movie size. I would suggest using Image Size unless you want a curtain resolution. Adjust the compression settings. I would use uncompressed unless you know of a compression type you want to use. Hit OK and your film will be rendered out as an avi movie file.