Want to do Time Lapse video - ideas on how?

scottz29 wrote on 2/6/2004, 11:43 AM
I know this is not directly related to Vegas, but I know there's lots of smart professionals out there with good ideas.

Anybody know how to do time lapse video? I'd like to stay away from a solution that's going to require some significant investment, like a special camera or vcr. I'd like to capture a high-quality image using my GL1, and a computer as the controller, if that is possible. Some shows I watch (American Chopper in particular) do an occasional time-lapse shot that lasts maybe 5 seconds, showing the sun quickly moving across the sky, and the shadows moving along the ground. Very cool, and this is what I am looking for. Also the quality is very high, and seems to be done using the cameras they shoot the show with.

Some software packages I saw do have a time-lapse mode, like "Gotcha!" but that seems to require a "webcam" of some sort, or a capture card that plugs into your serial port or something.

My requirements:
-- I want to capture about 12 hours of time at one frame per minute.
-- I would like to do this unattended, meaning I don't want to have to sit the whole time, pressing the record button once a minute.

Anybody got any ideas?

Comments

Jsnkc wrote on 2/6/2004, 12:10 PM
If only you had a GL2 instead of a GL1 you can do it very easily. But I don't see any other way to do it without getting some other piece of software or hardware.
johnmeyer wrote on 2/6/2004, 12:14 PM
The easiest way is to purchase Scenalyzer. Very inexpensive, and it will do exactly what you want:

Scenalyzer

Another alternative is to capture the video and then speed it up in Vegas. Since Vegas only lets you speed up to 4x, you may have to render several times using this approach.

If your camera has a "time lapse" mode, you can use that to record video, and then use my time lapse script to turn this into real time lapse. The "time lapse" mode on most cameras starts the camera every "n" minutes and then takes one second of video. It can't take just one frame because most video mechanisms are not capable of starting and stopping that precisely. My script then takes this one second of video and extracts a single frame from each one second clip. You are then left with true time lapse which you can then further speed up as described in the previous paragraph.

Here's the link to the time lapse script:

Time Lapse Script

However, if you want great time lapse, with total control over everything, get Scenalyzer and capture to a laptop (which lets you put your camera anywhere).
scottz29 wrote on 2/6/2004, 12:29 PM
if i just recorded normally and sped it up in vegas, then i would have to record and scan in 12 hours of footage....... :-( not gonna happen...

also, scenalyzer is just a capture program, i'd still need 12 hours of raw footage do to this, which is not what i want to do. i really want a way to capture one frame at a time. plus, why put my camera heads through 12 hours of recording if i don't have to?

scottz29 wrote on 2/6/2004, 12:30 PM
how would i do that with a GL2?
Jsnkc wrote on 2/6/2004, 1:01 PM
It has a setting for time lapse recording in the menu, you can set the interval for however long you want. I've used it a few times and it works pretty well. You will have to leave your camera on for the entire time you want to record though.
farss wrote on 2/6/2004, 1:24 PM
Not that I even have Scenalyser but I think it'll do what you want. It doesn't know if there's a VCR there or a camera. I'm certain it will have a interval record mode, Premiere certainly does.
JL wrote on 2/6/2004, 1:34 PM
>...extracts a single frame from each one second clip. >

Would shooting in progressive mode have any advantage here? That is, since you are combining single frames, would the higher vertical resolution (e.g., 1.5x for a GL2 in frame mode) give a better quality time lapse sequence?

JL
johnmeyer wrote on 2/6/2004, 2:34 PM
also, Scenalyzer is just a capture program, I'd still need 12 hours of raw footage do to this, which is not what i want to do

No, no, no. Go to the Scenalyzer site and look more closely. It will do EXACTLY what you want.

Really. Trust me.

Yes, it is a capture program, but it has a time lapse feature.

It works like this:

You attach your camera to the computer. You run Scenalyzer. You then go to File -> Options and click on the "time-lapse capturing - capture only one of N frames" box. It will look at the video coming in, and if you entered 60, then it will capture exactly one frame every two seconds (assuming you are using NTSC which is nominally 30 fps). The resulting frame is then saved, along with all the others, in an AVI file (unlike other programs which save each frame in a single bitmap file which must later be assembled into an AVI file).

Thus, for your 12 hour capture, you don't have to capture to tape, and you don't have to fill up a drive with 12 hours of video (ain't gonna happen, I think you said, and I agree). The only downside is that you will have to use a laptop for shooting outside the studio, but this is easy. Any laptop with a $20 Firewire PCMCAI card (eBay price) will do the trick. I use my 700 MHz Compaq Presario with an el-cheapo IBM Firewire card to do my captures.

Another poster said that your GL2 will do the pseudo time lapse capture, so that is another option. Just follow the advice I gave in my previous post about using my script to convert those one second clips into real time lapse, and that will work just as well (although it is a lot of starting and stopping for your camera).