Time Lapse Photography

Rick K wrote on 2/24/2003, 8:16 PM
Sunday, I took 3 hours of low moving clouds using a time interval feature of
my camera. It was set up to take 0.5 seconds of tape every 30 seconds.
Sunday night I created a few seconds of time lapse. Assuming I took 15
frames every 30 seconds, I took the first frame of each sequence, discarded
the remaining 14 frames, added the next frame, deleted the next 14 frames ad
infinitum. The results were very pleasing. I have a real commercial use
for this feature. So the Question is: can this be automated using scripts?
I write in 'c' and other languages. Can this be done? Can you point me in
the right direction or just straight out tell me how to do it. Lets share
this information with everyone.

Comments

sacherjj wrote on 2/24/2003, 9:14 PM
I use a frame capture program with a quick and dirty Visual Basic wrapper to just capture one frame per interval. You have to keep the camera connected to the computer for this, so it isn't as practical for field work, but it give decent results.
SonyPJM wrote on 2/25/2003, 8:26 AM
I think the RenderImageSequence sample script (included in the SampleScripts.zip download on the SoFo web site) can help. That script allows you to set the step time which, by default, is one frame but you can change it to 30 seconds or whatever suits your needs.

Once the image sequence is rendered, you can bring it back in as a single video stream using Vegas' image sequence capabilities and then render it back out again as an AVI or whatever.

But I should also point out that video events have velocity envelopes and playback rate settings which can be used to give a time-lapse or "fast forward" effect.
PAW wrote on 3/7/2003, 1:24 PM

struggling to find the SampleScripts.zip on the web site can anyone point me in the right direction?

Thanks, PAW
jetdv wrote on 3/7/2003, 1:59 PM
The zip file may be found here:

http://www.sonicfoundry.com/download/step2.asp?DID=437
Luxo wrote on 3/20/2003, 11:08 PM
Can't you get the effect you're looking for by simply rendering the footage at a low framerate? If it's takes a new shot periodically and holds it for half a second, re-render that footage as uncompressed AVI at 2 fps with no audio. Then when you import your new render into Vegas, change its properties from 2fps to 29.97.

Hm... I just tried this and it doesn't seem like Vegas 4 will let me change a clip's frame rate from the right-click properties. Any way to do this within Vegas?

If not, this seems to do the trick: http://www.kadath.com.ar/frateadj/. Just load the AVI, tell it the new frame rate, and it changes the AVI header information. No re-rendering required.

Luxo
taliesin wrote on 3/21/2003, 3:38 AM
Mmh, right-click menu works fine for me.

Marco
Rick K wrote on 3/27/2003, 8:53 PM
rightclick?