Time lapse

[Phil Kay]

I want to compress 1 hour of footage into about 2 minutes. What is the best way to capture on the A1 with it not having a time lapse function?

I posted this in the clips section by mistake,so didn't get any response.....

I have posted in other forums and people just say 'forget the A1 for time lapse and use a DSLR.....'

There must be some way of getting good TL on the A1?

[Kalulu Ngilo]

i recently did a timelapse using my a1. 1hour shot in 60i then imported into premiere and shrunk to about 3mins 11secs.

Full Auto, during Sunset.

[Simon Dean]

If you can run tethered you could always use something like OnLocation to grab time lapse to disk on your laptop (Assuming you're running Windows).

[Ben Crosbie]

You can do time-lapse with the A1. I first tried to do it using a dSLR, but mine doesn't have an intervalometer, so it was a huge PITA and turned out looking bad. I was too lazy to try it again, so I decided to try out the A1 instead -- MUCH easier in my opinion.

If whatever you want to film is an hour or less, then you can use the A1 without a problem. I've filmed time-lapse of the sunset, sunrise, and the moon using the A1. For the sunrise and sunset, I just set it to Tv mode, and let the iris adjust as it pleases. Otherwise, if the exposure is locked, different lighting conditions during a sunset or sunrise will either be over or underexposed. For the moon I completely lock the exposure.

Unfortunately I'm currently filming abroad and have no way to speed up the footage in a NLE to see how it worked, so I can only play it back on my A1 and fast forward. But after reviewing the footage this way, even though it cannot fast forward quickly, it still looks really good. With a time-lapse of the moon, you can easily see it moving across the frame -- pretty cool in my opinion.

[Daniel Epstein]

Phil,
Just run the tape in the camera for the hour. Ingest it into your NLE and accelerate the clip till it runs the length you want. Make sure you have a good tripod and don't bump the camera. Use Manual focus, Manual gain and Manual white balance so things don't shift. Manual exposure also usually works better but it depends on the lighting conditions of your shot. Playing with different shutter speeds and ND can help make the video look more like film timelapse.

[Chan Ee Jien]

Does it make a difference if I record in 25p or 50i? For slow motion I understand why 50 or 60i but what about fast motion?

[Dearl Golden]

Originally Posted by Ben Crosbie

You can do time-lapse with the A1. I first tried to do it using a dSLR, but mine doesn't have an intervalometer, so it was a huge PITA and turned out looking bad.

I have a Nikon D80 DSLR and it doesn't have an intervalometer either. I stumbled across this device, bought it, and it works great for doing time lapse sequences with the Nikon. (Kits for other camera available too)

http://www.pclix.com/

I haven't tried a time lapse with the A1, but I plan to get around to it one day.

[Eric Weiss]

i also do it in post. vegas has great options for speeding up and slowing down
footage.

[William Boehm]

just a thought from a novice...can you import the digital still camera images time lapsed with the pix into an nle that can form images suitable for the canon 16:9 format size?

bill
bothell, wa
wdboehm@yahoo.com

[Dearl Golden]

Originally Posted by William Boehm

just a thought from a novice...can you import the digital still camera images time lapsed with the pix into an nle that can form images suitable for the canon 16:9 format size?

bill
bothell, wa
wdboehm@yahoo.com

Still somewhat of a novice myself, but.....I have only imported still sequences to a SD (4:3) project and it works great. If you wanted to use the imported image sequence in a 16:9 project, you would have to re-size the stills, to match the project settings and pixel aspect ratio (PAR) in your NLE project. I use Photoshop for this, but I'm sure there are other applications/methods to do this.