Turning the pages of a PDF or a stack of images and an audio track into a video.
Drop in a scanned book, a multi-page score, or a folder of stop-motion frames. Every page of a PDF becomes its own item on the timeline, and separate image files work the same way — ClapperBoard does not much care what the images are, only that they come in an order and each one is on screen for a certain length of time.
Everything happens inside a project: an image lane and an audio lane laid out along a shared timeline. You set how long each image lasts, add transitions between them, crop away the parts you do not want, and export the result as a video or an animated GIF.
Most projects take one of three shapes, and knowing which one you are making tells you which parts of ClapperBoard matter to you.
A recorded voice and a stack of pages — a picture book read aloud, or any text followed along as it is spoken. The pages are few and each stays on screen a long time, so the work is in getting the page turns to land in the right places.
This is the shape ClapperBoard can time for you: it transcribes the narration, reads the text off the pages, matches the two, and retimes every page to fit. How to do it, start to finish.
Nor are you stuck with whole pages. Smart Text Crop finds the text on each page and splits it into separate items — one per paragraph, a set number of blocks per page, or every few lines — so the video can follow the narration a paragraph, or even a line, at a time.
Sheet music that turns in time with a recording. ClapperBoard can automate the tedious half — finding the staff systems on each page and cropping them out — but the timing is yours to place: you play the recording and mark where each system belongs. How to do it, start to finish.
Many images, each on screen briefly — stop-motion photography, hand-drawn animation, or a sprite sheet cut into cells. Here the work is in ordering the frames and giving them a consistent length, so ClapperBoard offers onion skinning, frame-by-frame stepping, looping playback, and GIF export. How to do it, start to finish.
A ClapperBoard project is a document, and opens, saves and lives on disk like any other. Each one gets its own window, and comes back the way you left it — the playhead where you put it, the timeline zoomed how you had it.
Editing leaves things behind. Cropping an image, replacing an asset or removing an item can orphan the underlying file, which stays on disk so that undo still works.
When those orphaned files add up, a badge appears in the toolbar showing how much space could be reclaimed, and offers to compact the project. You can also compact at any time from the File menu.
Compacting deletes the orphaned files and clears the undo history — that is the trade, and it is why it is offered rather than done silently. The confirmation says so before anything happens.
ClapperBoard checks shortly after a project opens and again periodically while you work, so the badge can appear mid-session. Straight after opening there is no undo history to lose; later in a session there may be a great deal, so it is worth reading the confirmation rather than waving it through.
The size at which ClapperBoard starts suggesting compaction is a setting, so you can raise it if you would rather not be asked, or lower it if disk space is tight.
Drag images, PDFs or audio files onto the timeline, or use File › Import Assets and pick several at once — ClapperBoard sorts them into the image lane or the audio lane by type.
A PDF becomes one item per page, in order, which is what makes scanned books and multi-page scores practical: import the file, and the pages are already laid out along the timeline.
To put something at a particular place rather than at the end, right-click an existing item and use Insert › Asset Before or Asset After.
ClapperBoard imports still images, PDFs and audio. It does not import video. If you want to use frames from a video, export them as images first, then import those.
A project window has a toolbar across the top, and three areas stacked below it.
Undo and redo, the timeline resize mode, and export. The resize-mode button shows which mode is active and switches when clicked; the export button fills with progress while a video is being written.
Two more appear only when they apply: a chapters button, once syncing to audio has found a table of contents, and a badge offering to compact the project once enough orphaned files have built up.
The frame as it will be exported, at the project's aspect ratio and against the canvas colour. This is also where you crop: drag out a rectangle over the image, and the area outside it is what gets trimmed away. You can zoom in for accurate work and scroll around when zoomed.
Two lanes — images above, audio below — laid out along time. Dragging an item's edge changes how long it lasts. The playhead marks where you are, and carries a readout showing which item you are on and how far into it you have got.
The timeline has three modes, chosen from the control bar. Standard is the normal view. Magnified is the same thing at much higher zoom, for placing something precisely. Reorder abandons the time axis and lays the items out as tiles, which is far easier when you want to rearrange a hundred stop-motion frames.
Along the bottom: playback controls with the elapsed and remaining time either side, the timeline zoom slider and mode switch on the left, and Render options on the right — where you set the resolution, frame rate, output format and canvas colour for the export.