A stop-motion studio that fits on a tablet

KinoQ is an app for shooting stop-motion animation, built for a tablet held on set. It runs entirely on the device and holds everything: the interface, your projects, the stored frames, and the exporting. You point it at a camera, shoot frame by frame against an onion skin, review the take, build your story outline into a cut, and export an image sequence or an MP4.

One codebase ships two ways. The browser app needs no install and shoots with the cameras attached to the device it runs on — an internal or USB webcam. The Android app is the same app, and adds cameras reached over your own network.

Four modes

Shoot is the live stage and the frame strip. Story and Production are two outlines — what happens, and what gets shot. Sequence plays the assembled cut against a transport and a timecode counter. The cut is the story outline's beats walked in order, so it is edited wherever the outline is.

Getting to a camera

The camera does exactly one job — stream a live preview and, when asked, return a full-resolution photo. Because the app owns the storage and not the camera, it runs with no camera attached: every screen works offline, and a camera is a capability you gain by connecting, not something the app needs to start.

A webcam needs nothing in between: the app drives an internal or USB camera directly, in either build. A camera on the network sits behind a small program called a bridge, which translates the app's requests into whatever that camera speaks — so supporting a new one means writing a new bridge, and nothing in the app changes.

Reaching a bridge is what the Android app is for. A page loaded over HTTPS is not allowed to open a plain connection to a device on your own network, so the browser app offers attached cameras only.

What's built today

The browser app is complete: the data model, the editing strip, review playback, export, camera control, framing aids, the two outlines, and the assembled cut are all built and tested. Any webcam works right away, so there is no hardware to set up before your first frame.

On the camera side, the network protocol (served over HTTP) and an Android / Camera2 bridge run on real phones. A Raspberry Pi bridge for Nikon cameras is the remaining piece being built. The same protocol is meant to reach any gPhoto-supported camera — Canon, Sony, Panasonic, and others — one bridge at a time.

Where your work lives

Everything is stored on the device (IndexedDB) — no account, no server, no sync. Exporting is the only way work leaves the device. See the privacy page for the full picture.

License & contact

KinoQ is dual-licensed: GPL-3.0 for open-source use, and a commercial license for use in closed-source products. For commercial terms or anything else, email john@rkroll.com.