Document Window
The document window is the main working area of iStopMotion. This is the place where you can address most of the tasks of the animation process. The window is separated into five functional sections:
Preview area
Here you can see the live feed of a connected video camera, furthermore you can display an overlay of the last captured image and/or the onion skins of the last few frames.
Sidebar
The three panes of the sidebar Recording, View and Compositing are explained in their respective parts of the reference.
Tool bar
The Tool bar is the central part of the iStopMotion window.

It contains three groupings of controls, labelled numerically in the picture above:
- Overlay slider and Live View switch: The overlay slider makes it possible to fade between live view (right) and the captured movie (left) seamlessly. If your digital still camera (DSLR) supports Live View, a button appears right next to the overlay slider. With this button you can turn the live view of your camera on and off.
- Transport controls: This section offers (next to the standard elements) the record button(s). If you are using a video camera there is one record button. As soon as a still camera is detected a second record button appears, the left one is for capturing a preview image, the right button then inserts this image to the timeline. This makes it possible to preview images before adding them.
- Sidebar switch: on the right hand side, you will find three buttons to switch between recording, view and compositing panes in the sidebar. You can also hide the sidebar completely by clicking again on the selected button.
Timeline
The timeline is described separately in the Timeline section.
Status bar
At the bottom of the window is the status bar. Here you can see relevant status information about your movie and the application iStopMotion itself. The elements, from left to right, are:
- Time display and switch to open the time inspector: Clicking the symbol on the left side opens the time display in an inspector window. Here and in the statusbar the current position in the movie document. By clicking the clock symbol it is possible to switch between timecode display and number of frames.
- Movie and selection information: The middle area of the status bar provides information about the entire movie and about the current selection.
- Voice recognition (only visible if voice recognition is activated in the shortcut presets): If voice recognition is activated you can see if the software is listening and if a command has been recognized.
- Background rendering status: At the far right a small progress indicator, if shown, informs you that iStopMotion is rendering a preview movie in the background. During such times the load on your computer will be fairly high.