Timelapse photography is probably the coolest thing you can do with thousands of images. Imagine being able to watch a 24 hour period in 5 minutes. Or even watch a beautiful Sunset or sunrise in less than 30 seconds. Or what if you like Watching clouds or trains or cars in transit, in a days time of travel you can recap your event in as low as 1 minute. The great thing is that creativity in timelapse photography is endless.
Take for instance my timelapse video from June 30 2008
This video was made from a total of around 4,000 images taken with my webcam and set to 15 frames per second in the video. You can see the clouds as they grew into storms and expand. Since I love the weather I love to capture active days so I can enjoy the Convection and the structure that comes with growth of each storm.
Or what about this video that was taken during the winter time. Again, my video.
Again this video included about 3 to 5,000 images which I in turn made a video at about 15 frames per second.
How Can you do this, You ask? I will gladly share my technique since I love to watch to watch timelapse videos and to be honest, there isnt enough IMHO.
Requirements………….. The First Step……….
1. Webcam or Digital Camera.
If you have a digital camera with a Timelapse option (aka interval option for taking a photo every second and up to 30 seconds to a minute, five minutes, hour apart) then you too can get involved. If you have a digital camera like I do, you can get involved as well, but your requirement to take each picture is solely on you. Having a digital camera with the option already is a great idea.
But, DONT GO OUT and buy a Digital Camera with the timelapse option in it. Unless of course if you insist.
I use a webcam which is attached to my Computer via usb. I attached my webcam to my Blinds so that I could record the weather.
NOT EVERY WEBCAM will come with Software so that you can take a photo automatically every 1-60 seconds with your webcam. Keep in mind when I do timelapse, I set the Webcam and forget it.
Your options for a software application to take the photos for you is endless. For myself, I wanted to find Free Open source applications.
Here is what I found. You can use Booru Webcam http://www.booru.net/download.html or Perios http://perios.ic.cz/ although perios didnt work for my machine which is vista.
Basically what you need to figure out is what you want to focus on. For Clouds I typically set the interval for 10 seconds and after about 6 hours I have around 3000 images which will make a 3 minute video with a frame rate of 15 frames per second.
For support with these applications please ask the Creator. They are pretty straight forward. Just remember if you use Booru to click options and for Filename use “nameyouwant%i” the “%i” will make it so that it will save every image made with a count. Such as if you use “image%i” the first image will be named “image1″ and then the second “image2″ and so on.
THE SECOND STEP…… Making your Movie…….
So now you got a ton of photos in a folder and you want to make a movie. This is the funnest part cause soon your gonna see what you worked so hard for. Again I focused on the free open source options for an application.
There are not many free open source applications. On my research I found alot which moved more towards a slideshow movie rather than a fast paced movie which is timelapse.
MAKEAVI http://makeavi.sourceforge.net/ is a neat and simple little program which does the job very quickly and the results are great. There is also JPGVIDEO http://www.snapfiles.com/get/jpgvideo.html which is also a great option.
Keep in mind that you will need what we call a Codec in the movie making world. I wont go into specifics but basically a codec will make a video that is around 5 minutes long about 20 megabytes. If you dont use a Codec a 5 minute video can get up to several hundred megabytes which is aggravating if you want a quick upload to your website or video sharing site.
I reccommend the DIVX codec found at http://www.free-codecs.com/download/DivX_Free.htm I can also suggest the XVID codec as well.
When you load either MAKEAVI or JPGVIDEO just load your folder of Photos. Set your Frame Rate or FPS to whatever you choose. I suggest you experiment with different numbers. Just remember, the Lower the slower and the higher the faster. I use 15 fps.
Once youve set your FPS just hit “create or go” and select your codec and hit okay and within a few moments you will have a new timelapse video.
Review your video to make sure its what you want and then Upload to your website or video sharing website and let millions see what you have made.
I bought a new webcam recently and cant wait for an active day to test it out. Since I made my first timelapse video I was absolutely hooked. It is soo neat to see a day of weather in 5 minutes. You can even add a soundtrack to make the video even more exciting. Just make sure you dont use copyrighted material. I use Audioswap on Youtube.
If you have any questions feel free to ask by Contacting me using the Contact http://www.severeidaho.com/contact.php form or Registering and leaving a Comment.
Thanks for visiting and I hope to see the Timelapse videos you make. Thanks…
-gerrit