I'm still not following why people are suggesting shooting in real time for a smooth time lapse... you can get just as smooth a timelapse shooting with the built in feature as you can shooting real time as long as you work it right in post.

With .5 second recording times, I can speed up the footage in Vegas 5 so that each recording period is cut down to a single frame, which obviously is as smooth as you can get... not the slightest bit of choppiness. (I think that's a 12x speed increase, shooting in 24p mode). Of course, if you want playback any slower than that this won't work, but 12x seems like a comfortable speed to me.

Am I missing something? I just don't see why anyone would ever want to shoot in realtime and/or in LP mode, unless they wanted a shorter recording interval for a less than 12x playback speed, but like I said, 12x seems pretty good.

I could probably dig up a sample if anyone want's visual confirmation :)

Visual confirmation! :)

0.5 second recording time (every minute?)

I plan on capturing someone walking through their room doing things, so I figured shooting about 15 minutes straight and fast forwarding it in post will be better than the alternative, or still no?

Ash,

Funny you should mention that interval. As I was reading this thread, I kept thinking about the beautiful sped up sky sequence in the Sony HD XDCAM demo movie. Yes, it was shot at 1 fps and it looked great.

-gb-

You've got it! Sorry I uploaded as a wmv, but here's what I'm talking about:

http://www.particleproducing.com/videos/time lapse.wmv

Due to the nature of the shot it's probably not the best example (not a natural scene like a cloudscape), but you can see the sun slowly moving down the sky in the background.

What were your exact settings? 0.5 seconds every 1 minute?

Very nice, btw.

I use scenalyzer software connected to the camera and a laptop for timelapse. This gives you total control on the number & frequency of frame capture.

http://www.scenalyzer.com/

I am currently running a camera gathering 40 seconds of footage every 8 hours, monday to friday, of a garage construction.

Thank you. I had .5 sec recording time with the shortest interval... is it a minute? I thought it was 30 seconds. Whichever one is shortest. And in vegas I had the velocity envelope at 300% and playback rate at 4x in properties, so a total 12x acceleration that makes for 1 frame per .5 second recording (12 frames in 1/2 sec).

To get really good timelapse shots of clouds etc you need to be able to shoot one frame per sec or one frame every 2 seconds. Shooting at a 30 second interval, the clouds just move to far between shots. The only way using the XL2 is to run the camera at normal speed and speed up in post.

The alternative way is to use a digital still camera, again most camera will not shoot a frame a sec over a long period unless you connect the stills camera to a laptop. Using this method you can import the stills taken, into a editing software and get HD resolution timelapse

The interval all depends... if you shoot in real time and speed up in post, you have ALL the info there to make it any speed you want. If you shoot 15 frames every 30 seconds you are missing 98.5% of the information! Super compressed time lapse wont matter but tighter shots of clocks, clouds, traffic, shadows, etc. will look terrible.

Anyone thinking about real time lapse work should consider a D-SLR... GREAT results...



ash =o)

You can also use a film camera with a bulk-film back, then simply scan the images to make extremely high resolution digital files. For example, my Nikon F5 shoots at 8-frames per second.

Xl2 Time Lapse
 

HI I must disagree about XL2 not doing short delay time lapse; try Btv Pro Carbon, it is A Time Lapse Application Which Is Cheap - You Set XL2 To External Control: Knob Forward - Very Easy To Use And Cheap, Has Motion Sensing As Well.

I'ts All About Control - When We Did Plants On 16mm, We Synchronised A Strobe With The Open Shutter And Got Super Sharp Stills On Each Frame.

Rod C

sorry about kingcaps i'm fighting a cold and can't be bovvered to alter them

You can do that as well Rodney but you are still limited to DV resolution. If you do a lot of timelapse D-SLR is the way to go.



ash =o)

D-SLR plugged in a laptop
 

Ash
What software do you use for lapse time shooting with your D-SLR?
I have a Canon 20D and I have to do a shoot of a busy airport ramp during bank arr/dep. I also have an xl2 but I understand I'll get better results with my 20D.
Brice

Has anybody tried Imovie's timelapse feature ?

I haven't tried it out in the field yet but it works OK in the office. There is not need to speed up the shot and no need to worry about running out of tape, only computer batteries.

You could do timelapse in DV 4:3 /16:9.

I use a laptop with a freeware program, cant think of the name right now and dont have my laptop here. I believe you can just use the Canon software as well. You can also use the Canon remote...



ash =o)