How to make a decent timelapse?

OGUL wrote on 12/19/2012, 10:34 AM
Hi to all!

What I have in hand :
GH2 / Hama Gamma 74 Tripod / JJC TM timer remote control.

Questions about shooting stage:
On the GH2, I should chose 16:9 , 1920 x 1080 or a larger file?
The intervals? Every 3 seconds / Every five seconds... etc???

Editing stage:
I currently have V9 / V10 / V11.
Can I make timelapse with Vegas by adjusting these settings:
Options / Preferences / Editing / New still image lenght or
I should buy Twixtor or something else?

I've read in a book but can't remember now which one, the author advises to shoot 1 sec videos with appropriate intervals and then combine them?
Is is really the same? I mean the final effect??

In Premier Elements 7, in the book of Steve Grisetti, he explains how to make timelapse easily. You just put a video of 5-6 minutes and PE7 chose frames among them.

Thanks in advance.

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 12/19/2012, 10:48 AM
Many camcorders have a built-in time lapse function. If yours does, set it and you're done. You'll end up with a finished video file that you can import into Vegas as a single piece.

If you do end up with a series of individual stills then Vegas' function to 'import image sequence' is the best way to go as this lets you specify the finished frame rate and imports the lot as a single video event.

If you shoot real-time with your camcorder then you can simply speed up the event in Vegas by several methods: ctrl-squishing the event, velocity envelope, any of a number of scripts, etc. I would recommend disabling resampling to avoid getting a blur as frames are blended together.
musicvid10 wrote on 12/19/2012, 10:49 AM
Your shooting intervals (frame rate) will depend on the length of the shoot, length of the produced video, and how much granularity (motion) you want in the final product.

Better to shoot too many pictures and pare them down proportionally in post, rather than not enough pictures. More flexibility in editing.
FilmingPhotoGuy wrote on 12/19/2012, 11:02 AM
I've done a few timelapses and theres no hard and fast rule about time intervals. Intervals will depend very much on the subject matter. When I bring the images onto the timeline I set image duration to 1.500 seconds with overlap of .500.

You can set this in Options-Preferences-Editing tab.
New Still Image Length 1.500
Cut-to-overlap-conversion 1.00

Render this to a clip. The motion will be slightly jerky but bring this clip back into vegas' timeline then CTL drag clip shorter to get a smoother finish.

rs170a wrote on 12/19/2012, 11:28 AM
I prefer to use the "Still Image Sequence" option when I use timelapse images.
Make sure all images are in the same folder and are properly sequentially numbered.
File - Import - Media, browse to the folder where the images are, click on the first one in the sequence, click "Open still image sequence" at the bottom of this window, click Open, make any necessary adjustments in the tab that comes up and click OK.
The sequence will now be sitting in your Project Media waiting to be added to the timeline.

Mike
john_dennis wrote on 12/19/2012, 11:30 AM
You may want to shoot stills at greater than 1920x1080 if you want to do any pan/crop in the final video.

If the project is long, like months you may need longer delays between frames to make the data manageble.

Here are two from stills.


is over months.


is over a few hours.
rs170a wrote on 12/19/2012, 11:50 AM
Here's an example of one I did last month.
It was the tech setup for a wrestling match and ran from 4p.m. on a Friday to 4 a.m. Saturday morning.
It was shot with a GoPro 2 set to 1 frame every 10 seconds (5000 frames in all).
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20488019/GoPro.mp4
The file is 144 MB. so it's best to download it first.

Mike
musicvid10 wrote on 12/19/2012, 1:03 PM
Here's a holiday video I shot a year ago; 2+ hrs. worth at standard 29.97, then sped up 16x without resampling in Vegas. Multiples of 2 work best.
That's me performing the Christmas music.
;?)

farss wrote on 12/19/2012, 2:07 PM
"I've read in a book but can't remember now which one, the author advises to shoot 1 sec videos with appropriate intervals and then combine them?

There's different ways of doing timelapse that produce a different look.

One is to use an undercranked camera keeping the shutter at 180deg.
With some creative cutting you can do Last Train to Beethoven.

A current trend is to add something extra by using a DSLR with a motorised slider. In this setup the controller sends a pulse to the motor at set intervals, in between the camera moves, the shutter is fired. This avoids the problem of jitter from using a fast shutter speed while moving the camera. The Kestler "Oracle" controller is the goto tool for this in conjunction with their Cineslider.

Bob.