Using the WorkPrinter is pretty straight forward. Your camera sits on a tripod and you zoom in on the aeriel image that appears in the condenser lens. There is no screen. The lens of the projector and the lens of the camera combined with the WorkPrinter's condenser lens creates one gigantic lens that provides a microscopic view of the surface of the film. So you can see this practice as shooting off a magnified view of the gate or that you are projecting an image directly onto the CCD of your camera. It's the same thing. The SynchMouse (provided with the unit) is the key to how the WorkPrinter series interfaces with your computer edit system. Several computer programs, like CineCap or CaptureMate can be used to perform stop motion capture. Using stop motion capture, each time the left mouse button is clicked, a separate frame will be captured and added to an ever-expanding movie file on the hard drive that can be played just like any other movie file created with your video camera. So that you don't have to click the mouse for each frame, the SynchMouse has a cord that connects it to a small microswitch in the WorkPrinter unit, which effectively clicks the mouse for you on each frame. The projector is capable of advancing the film one frame at a time and the video camera is actually looking at the surface of the film for maximum image quality. Each time a new frame comes up in the gate of the projector, the micro switch closes and "presses" the left mouse button automatically, which commands the computer to capture that frame of movie film and write it to the drive of the computer. Then, the film advances and the same thing happens for the next frame, and the next and the next and so on, for hundreds, even thousands of frames. The end result is that each frame of your movie will exist on a separate frame of video on your hard drive. Then the playback rate of those frames can be determined by using CineCap or your existing edit software for perfect, flicker free movies on video with clarity edge to edge and zero hot spot. The ability to transfer each frame and keep them separate makes the WorkPrinter series the finest personal transfer device available for super 8, regular 8 or 16mm film.