andrewg112 Posted March 20, 2011 Share Posted March 20, 2011 Hello All, I know this have been covered to a extent before, as I did a quick search! Tomorrow morning we are having a set build, today someone said that it would be nice for it to be "recorded and then speedy up type thing" This does seem like a good idea, but I haven't got much time to prep and put it in at the venue. Initially, I wanted to use my camera Fuji s2800HD, but this has no option for time lapse or anything similar as far as I can work out. My next thought was to use my laptop and a el-cheapo webcam, just to document the thing. I had a quick browse and cant find really what I was looking for. Ideally a photo every 5 seconds? Saved to the hard drive on the laptop. Oh, and as cheap as possible, I cant ever see myself using this again! Any Ideas Much Appreciated! Andy, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrewt Posted March 20, 2011 Share Posted March 20, 2011 There are several programs you can download that will do this, the one I use is called "Willing Webcam", which can also be used for a whole load of other things other than time lapse. It can record from any webcam, and can also take a firewire input if that would be any use. The free trial is good for something like 3 weeks, and is fully functional. It can automatically save the photos to a video file of your specification, or it can save a load of jpgs if that's what you really want. Bear in mind that as well as setting a frame capture rate you need to think about the frame rate of the final video. I've found that taking a photo every two seconds and putting it into into a 30fps video works well. This means that every second of video is a minute real time, one minute is an hour etc. I find a photo every 5 seconds a bit too fast for my liking, a lot of detail is lost, and don't forget you can always speed up a video afterwards, but you can't slow it down. If you end up putting it onto DVD then it might be worthwhile working out a suitable capture rate for 25fps video. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
charl.ie Posted March 20, 2011 Share Posted March 20, 2011 I've used "Gawker" to produce some good videos, if you're on Mac OS/X. Worked well with any webcam I plugged in, or took "my" el-cheapo video camera through firewire. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peza2010 Posted March 20, 2011 Share Posted March 20, 2011 I wouldn't use anything to create a time lapse before edit.I would just get footage of the whole thing, and then just speed up the footage Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ynot Posted March 20, 2011 Share Posted March 20, 2011 I wouldn't use anything to create a time lapse before edit.I would just get footage of the whole thing, and then just speed up the footageThen you've either never done a lengthy getin (which can last anything from half a day to a week depending on the show/venue/crew) or you don't realise how much disk space such a video will take up! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unfathomable Posted March 21, 2011 Share Posted March 21, 2011 I have just edited one that had been done with raw footage... my computer did not like the 300gb of resulting footage, particularly as it ended up as a 5 minute film. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peza2010 Posted March 21, 2011 Share Posted March 21, 2011 I wouldn't use anything to create a time lapse before edit.I would just get footage of the whole thing, and then just speed up the footageThen you've either never done a lengthy getin (which can last anything from half a day to a week depending on the show/venue/crew) or you don't realise how much disk space such a video will take up!well in that case I think you have jumped to a conclusion :PI have both done lengthy get ins and know how much video space can take up... But storage is cheap nowadays, and then end result was better (and no I'm not suggesting the poster goes and buys a big harddrive - I just had one to hand) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peternewman Posted March 21, 2011 Share Posted March 21, 2011 Bear in mind that as well as setting a frame capture rate you need to think about the frame rate of the final video. I've found that taking a photo every two seconds and putting it into into a 30fps video works well. This means that every second of video is a minute real time, one minute is an hour etc. I find a photo every 5 seconds a bit too fast for my liking, a lot of detail is lost, and don't forget you can always speed up a video afterwards, but you can't slow it down.I was going to say I'm surprised you take them that frequently Andrew, I think for most of the ones I've done, I've taken a picture every thirty seconds. However looking back, I think as Ynot kind of mentioned, what you actually want to do is work it out based on how long the get in is. For a reasonable day, my frame every 30s got played at 6fps to give 3-4 mins of footage. With hindsight your figure is probably right for dailies, and you can always drop frames on longer runs to speed it up during generation; as its been pointed out, disk space is cheap now. One every 30s does sometimes mean you miss stuff, I guess it depends what you're hoping to capture. One of the timelapses I've always rather liked, was somewhat unintentional, grabbing images from our students union webcam over the course of a day for an event, and the pattern of the floor drying after the cleaners had washed it looked cool. On the software front, Fwink should do what you want as well I think, or I normally end up using some random home brew software. I'd recommend ffmpeg for combining the frames, as its very speedy, and a quick Google will reveal the right type of commands to run with it, although I guess something else may be more user friendly. Overall though, have fun with it and you might find it quite addictive, the most challenging bit is often finding somewhere out of the way, solid and secure to leave the camera/laptop, and make sure you're batteries are charged/use a PSU if possible! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the kid Posted March 21, 2011 Share Posted March 21, 2011 Have a look and see if there is a hack for your cam. I know some SLR's have hacks to do time lapse Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
c.cam108 Posted March 21, 2011 Share Posted March 21, 2011 If it helps, most IP cameras have this functionality built in and will transfer to an FTP server, keeping the valuable computer out of the way! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrewg112 Posted March 21, 2011 Author Share Posted March 21, 2011 Cheers for all the replys! Set build took place this morning, without any time-lapse filming. I tried to use willing webcam, but it all happened just too late! Lucky the dog woke me up, I slept straight through my alarm for my early start! I couldn't find a way to get the camera to record for any length of time more than 2 seconds. Lights go in tomorrow, will try again for that! Thanks Anyway,Andy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
overhyped Posted March 21, 2011 Share Posted March 21, 2011 Another good one to try is WinDV Clicky... It works best with firewire devices, but I have a suspicion it can handle USB webcams as-well. You can set it to record "1 in N" frames, it'll put them into a timestamped .avi file too, which I find pretty handy for time-lapses. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
willdoweuk Posted March 21, 2011 Share Posted March 21, 2011 I have done the exact same thing, but with a very useful piece of software called HandyAVI I would definately reccommend it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkPAman Posted March 23, 2011 Share Posted March 23, 2011 Do keep an eye on the camera though. I've got (or had) a 6 hour video of a desk case lid that got dumped near the start and was only moved just before the doors! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TomG Posted March 26, 2011 Share Posted March 26, 2011 After reading this thread I thought I would give it a go. I tried gawker and my webcam, but the low resolution put me off from using it for my actual rig-lapse. So I had a little hunt around to see how I could do it with my Canon EOS 1000D, which lead me to the Canon EOS Utility Software, which is free with any cannon DSLR. This software has some nifty tricks up it's sleeve including tethered shooting, and an interval timer. The video bellow is final output after my mate from uni had stitched together the 782 pictures, taken over 5 hours. Enjoy :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMned8JHYK4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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