Time lapse

[dawson]

A member emailed me asking about the time lapse video I composed from the Wymeswold meet the other night:

 

http://s1311.photobucket.com/user/jamesdawson/media/trailwyms1_zps0f08dcd0.mp4.html?sort=3&o=2

 

I thought it would be useful to have a time lapse thread as I'm sure others will have advice and hopefully some results to share. I'll post my reply to their PM below too.

 

James

 

[dawson]

My reply:

 

I use Picasa, a free thing from Google:

 

http://picasa.google.co.uk/

 

It's quite processor intense when you first install it as it unfortunately searches the whole computer for pictures and videos and then does face recognition annoyingly. But I've found it's good at making time lapse videos and does it quite quickly. There are probably other free ware to do the same job with much less hassle.

 

What I do is to make sure the folder with the frames is in loaded into Picasa. Select the frames you want to use (generally select all) then click create, video (from selection), then under the transition style box select time lapse, Change the dimensions as you see fit (bigger are better quality but take slightly longer to do and the resultant file size can be pretty big); I leave the slide duration at 1/24 sec, but again you can fiddle with this, then click create video and it works away making the time lapse. Finding the resultant video was hard but I've worked out it makes a folder in my pictures called Picasa and in there it makes a sub folder called videos and it will be in there.

 

Tips: Ideally try and keep the lighting the same for each and every frame, not too difficult at night, but in the day it can be difficult which is why most of the stuff done with flowers opening and the like are done in a studio with fixed lighting. Keep the focus on manual and fixed. You can't get too many frames. For clouds (I'll put one on photobucket and send the link shortly), I do one still every 5 seconds; you could do them more often. Shoot in jpeg as it's unlikely you'll need to do much with the files and you'll fill the memory card up and the time lapse software doesn't like raw anyway.

 

But trial and error.

 

I'd love to see your results.

 

James

[dawson]

My reply part 2:

 

Here is another time-lapse related thread which might help you:

 

http://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/topic/3869-image-stacking-with-a-time-lapse-movie/?hl=%2Btime+%2Blapse

 

Here is one of my cloud time lapses link:

 

http://s1311.photobu...f71e6d.mp4.html

 

We should start a time lapse thread properly.

 

James