This is pretty good free camera capture software for stop motion and hand drawn animation.
Connect cam to the computer.
Launch stop motion studio.
Click the plus sign to add a project.
Click settings and set the frame rate.
Click the Camera button and choose your camera.
What's the vertical slider for on screen left? I think it's an electronic aperture for the camera, with up being fully open and down being fully closed? Try sliding it up until you get a good exposure.
Frame your camera appropriately by moving it while looking at the live image in stop motion studio.
To capture frames of animation, click the red record button on the right side.
When you're done capturing the animation, click the play button above the record button in order to playback your animation.
To save your movie to disk, click Back on the left and then click the Save button at the bottom. Choose an export format and click Save. Browse to the appropriate location, name the file, and click Save to export an mp4.
To edit a project that you've already exited, select its icon on the main screen and click the pencil icon at the bottom.
The project seems to remain in stop motion studio indefinitely when you relaunch the program. You can optionally save the project to disk by selecting it in the main screen, clicking Save at the bottom, and choosing "Export Project" from the drop-down list.
After doing all of that, I can't seem to stay in any project for more than a moment before the program crashes. Restarting my computer fixed the problem.
I paid 2 bucks for a full upgrade, but the free version probably does everything that I need. I was hoping the upgrade would let me manage my projects, save them to disk, etc. I haven't explored that, yet.