Everybody that does time lapse has their own process and technique. I was asked to share mine. It is unique to my situation. I use the Sebectec Olympus SP500 package (excellent software). I have 3 cams aligned to form a panorama. We are fortunate to live in a location with a very wide view. It takes 3 cams to get it all in. Aligning them is a painful process, but final adjustments can be made with the Sebectec software. A separate computer is needed for each cam. I use 5 computers to run my site.
http://www.skunkbayweather.com/
I run my cams 24/7 and take an image every 20 seconds and upload once a minute. Every day, each cam takes approximately 3,500 images. At the top of every hour, I have the Sebectec software configured to create a 1024 x 576 time lapse of the previous 3 hours at 30 frames per second and a bitrate of 24,000. These are the hourly production time lapses I put up to my site. I just put together this new page:
http://www.skunkbayweather.com/SkunkBayWebcam.html I also put the same time lapse at 1280x720 up to a public folder for remote access and to share with the media. These are a little higher quality and too big for most internet connections to stream efficiently.
All of the above would be what I call production work. The Sebectec software is basically a set it and forget it package…. For the ad hoc work that I do, I use Movie Studio Platinum 14.0. It seems to meet my needs. I have some dynamic scripts that I can use to pull the images I want to use into specific folders…. For example, the script will pull all the images from 2:00pm to 8:00pm from each cam and drop them into my 3 working folders on my local machine. If I am going to “stitch” them into either a 2 or 3 cam panorama there is a bit more to it. The images really need to be aligned chronologically. In other words, the cams work at slightly different speeds. I built an Excel spreadsheet that analyzes the time stamps of all the images and creates a text file with a list of images to use in the time lapse. The strategy is to look at all 3 images and if one of the cams starts to fall behind, it will use the same image twice from the cameras that are getting ahead. This way I try to keep the images as close together as possible. You really can’t see the doubled up images. Sebectec can then use that image list to create a time lapse video. The three files will have exactly the same number of images. So, after I have created those 3 time lapses, I open them in Movie Studio. I put each file on its own video track. Then I adjust the offset to align each one side by side. In other words, the video from Cam1 is on the left. I adjust the X offset to -640, 0 (centered) on Cam2 and +640 on Cam3. All of the heights are adjusted to 360. This nets a 360x1920 video that is centered. It also is produced at the standard 30fps. Once I have that video, I can start enhancing it.
I believe the real value of time lapse is that it should tell a story. In order to present it in a way that allows our eyes to process the information, the playback speed needs to be adjusted. This will greatly enhance the story. For example, the Weather Workshop video I put together opens with a Superior Mirage time lapse. It is a full day in 1 minute. By speeding it up you can see the opposite shoreline and mountains jumping up and down very clearly. That tells a better story. In the middle of the video there is a sunrise that is gorgeous. I slowed that one down as much as I could without making it choppy. I wanted to give the eyes plenty of time to drink it in. Every time lapse in this 11 minute video has been chronologically edited to tell a better story.
http://www.skunkbayweather.com/WeatherWorkshop2015.mp4 It’s all subjective. Adjusting the playback speed is quite easy. This is done simply by stretching or shrinking the time line in Movie Studio.
With 3 cams, I like to use a variety of angles to tell the story. I’ll use the 3 cam panorama to give the big picture and individual cams to show detail. Here is a big convergence zone that rolled through last week.
Big picture with the 3 and then details from each cam. There are a total of 6 time lapse video files involved to put this together. 3 chronologically aligned files for the panorama and then the three individual ones. Each one is edited for both playback speed and duration.
There are a couple of things that I think make difference. When you adjust the playback speed, it seems to smooth the video a bit. You can take it right to the edge of jerkiness and then dial it in. The other rule I try live by is that the average viewer of a time lapse will have an attention span of 20 seconds and if you are lucky you can hold them for 30. I try… to live by that, but it is hard sometimes.
So…. I have rambled long enough. Once I start typing…. I hope I have shared what you are looking for. It sounds way more complex than it is. After you do this a bit, it is pretty easy.
Greg
