Time Lapse

Vifa wrote on 11/10/2017, 11:22 AM

Hi,

I'm new to Vegas Pro 15 and video editing in general.

I need a little help to get started with a time lapse I'm about to do. About 140.000 pictures have to be cut down to about 2 minutes. I tried to find some tutorials on Youtube but I can't find any that answers my questions regarding time lapse video. I can't figure out how I speed up my sequence. My 'Stills Sequence´ will be played at the frame rate I choose while importing media, but what if I want to speed it even more up ?

Best Regards

Vifa

Comments

fr0sty wrote on 11/10/2017, 12:43 PM

First, be sure you are indeed importing the images as an image sequence (click the first image to import, then check the "import image sequence" check box). Then set your desired frame rate for the sequence (I personally like to do my lapses at 60fps, they look smoother that way, but 24fps is common). From there, you can right click on the image sequence on the timeline, and go to insert/remove envelope on the following menu. From there, you'll see a sub-menu appear with a velocity option. Choose that option. From there you'll see a rubber band pop up over the clip that can be used to adjust its speed from 0-1000%, thus slowing it to a stop or speeding it up 10x. If you need even more speed, bounce that 1000x down to a new track by selecting "render to new track" under tools, and repeat the process to speed it up again.

If you want to get into timelapses seriously, I recommend Adobe Lightroom to process the stills in groups with far more color and image correction options than Vegas offers, and then get a plugin for it called LR timelapse. That program will scan your lapse for changes in brightness or flicker, and remove them. It does this completely non-destructively, all it does is make changes to the photo's meta data, and you load that meta data into Lightroom, where the changes are then applied to the images and rendered to new images. It works quite well, though for more complex shots like a sunset manually exposed will take some time to tweak it just right.

Here's one I shot recently. You'll see a few artifacts in the image here and there where I attempted to remove dust that was on my sensor, ALWAYS CHECK YOUR LENS AND SENSOR FOR DUST BEFORE SHOOTING!!! This doesn't mean just inspect the glass and sensor and blow them off/clean them (avoid ever touching your sensor, use air or the camera's built in sensor cleaning mechanisms), but also take a sample image, blow it up full screen on a monitor or TV, so you can see it pixel for pixel (or as close to it as possible). Often times the viewfinder will hide dust that can be seen at full screen. If lapsing the sun, film yourself shining a flashlight into the lens at various angles, then watch it full screen. That will reveal any dust on the lens you may have missed, the sun WILL make every spec of it shimmer like a diamond, so be sure to get it all and clean it during the lapse as well if shooting for more than a few hours. To easily see sensor dust, take a pic of a blue sky and then look at it full screen... as in not on the camera's viewfinder.

https://www.facebook.com/dustin.rudzinski/videos/10159146597495007/

Here's another one: https://www.facebook.com/dustin.rudzinski/videos/10157312086350007/

This one is at 60fps: https://www.facebook.com/dustin.rudzinski/videos/10159271995540007/

Vifa wrote on 11/11/2017, 4:35 PM

Hi,

Thanks for the replies. The velocity feature is what I was looking for. It looks really great now.

You suggest I choose 60 fps while I import my sequence of pictures - but what about my project settings?

A lot of this is new to me, the properties of the sequence, my project settings and my render settings - all this confuse me a bit at the moment :-/

john_dennis wrote on 11/11/2017, 6:59 PM

Let's look at the concepts. You said that you have one hundred forty thousand still images in a folder. One thing to keep in mind is that still images don't have a frame rate. You can hold one in you hand or watch one on a screen indefinitely. Your still image sequence only has a frame rate after the stills are imported into Vegas Pro. Then, the frame rate is equal to the project frame rate at the time the stills are imported or a frame rate that you choose in the Properties panel that's presented.

Let's see how much time your source files would play at 59.94 fps.

140,000 frames x 1 Sec/59.94 frames = 2335 seconds x 1 min/60 seconds = ~ 40 minutes possible

Your stated target video time is two minutes

2 min x 60 seconds/1 min = 120 seconds of video run time.

120 seconds x 59.94 frames/1 second = 7193 frames in your two minute video.

Since you have 140,000 frames, you will throw away 19.4 frames for every frame that you keep. (You might blend a few of them depending on your resample setting.)

You don't absolutely, positively have to render at your selected initial project frame rate. Even though it's a good practice for other video projects, you're already doing all of the frame dropping and combining that you would otherwise try to avoid.

If you have to (or choose to) make multiple passes, render to a lossless or codec that gives you acceptable video degradation for the generations that you will need.