Timelapse software

[kthung]

Hi everyone,

This newfangled thing called "video" entirely unknown to me (well, how to make them at least). Anyways, last night I used my K20D's interval shooting mode to record the sun rising, and they came out great, but I have no idea what software to use to stitch these pictures together into a video. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Thanks

[mike_lambert]

Have a look at Googles Picassa its free and I think pretty good. Its very simple to use, press the "Create Movie Presentation" button and follow the prompts.

[richtrav]

Note this only applies for Photoshop, but IF you have a video-enabled version of Photoshop (like CS3 extended) it's extremely easy, all you have to do is put all the pics into a folder, go to Open in Photoshop and make sure the "Image Sequence" box is checked and just select the first file in the folder. Note that you only want the files you'll use for your the video in the folder because it takes every single picture in the folder and throws it into your video file. It will then prompt you for the frame rate you want and you're set. When you're ready you then export it as a video (I think the command is Render Video, where you can set the resolution, compression scheme etc). I've been doing this with thousands of files and it is easy but the rendering is pretty slow when many hundreds of pictures are involved (though you can just walk away for a while and let Photoshop do its thing).

That is by far the easiest way I know of turning still pictures into a video; you can also run a script in photoshop that loads the files into a stack but it takes many more steps to do and the pictures load backwards, which you then have to reverse: that is after you've changed them into layers then convert them to frame animation blah blah blah. It's much easier to open them as a simple image sequence and then render it as a video. This method can also turn the k20d's 21 fps burst mode into essentially a short soundless video mode.

[kthung]

Thanks richtrav! I never knew CS3 could do that. Mike, I also appreciate the suggestion, but I couldn't figure out picasa. I would select all the pictures I wanted for my video and then clicked create movie presentation but ended up with just the title slide and one picture

[richtrav]

Originally Posted by kthung

Thanks richtrav! I never knew CS3 could do that. Mike, I also appreciate the suggestion, but I couldn't figure out picasa. I would select all the pictures I wanted for my video and then clicked create movie presentation but ended up with just the title slide and one picture

I forgot to add that Mpeg Streamclip can also do it, you just drag every JPEG you want into its window and it assembles them as a video. The only problem I've seen is that they always come out to 15 fps and I can't figure out how to retime it to a faster rate

[petercrane]

Quicktime Pro does it. Worth looking at for those who don't have photoshop.

[glasbak]

I used virtualdub to convert a timelapse series shot with my K10D to a video.
Its free, its the swiss army knife of videotools, and can import image sequences, what do you want more.

[jeremyhall]

Anyone using a mac with Snow Leopard (10.6) automatically has Quicktime Pro (it's different to Quicktime X) - I've used it to stitch a time-lapse video together, and it was great.

[Squas]

Hey I`m using Snow Leopard, but I can`t find Quicktime Pro there and Quicktime X is not really helping with Time-lapse videos.