Evening night shot effect with the DVX
 

Can I do this with the DVX? If so.... how should I set up for it? What settings are best?

URL link...

http://www.illconcepts.com/highway.jpg

Wow. That's some serious time lapse there.

I do know the DVX can be set to record at interval (Time Lapse) recording with adjustable record duration and interval time (their exact words in fact). I have not personally tried it but...

I suggest getting out your user manual and giving it a shot. The best thing is to experiment. I always thought this technique was done by slowing down the exposure time on a frame of film. I wonder if the DVX is suited for this.

Hmmm... I have no idea how the DVX would do. Start trying different settings I guess. As far as Scene File settings go, I would first capture as normal to see what settings you like.

The first thing i tired was recording 5 minutes of car footage. Then in post I speeded it up. Looked liked poo!

Maybe playing around with the shutter speed? will that do anything? Or is there an effect in after affects that i can apply to achive that light streak effect.

The DVX100A might be able to do better on this, since it has slow shutter speeds down to 1/4-second...

Yeah, this is a result of slow shutter speed, not time lapse, I believe. It's easy to do this with still photography, since an SLR camera will let you keep the shutter open for a very long time if you want to. Video is harder, but if what Barry says is right, you might be able to with the DVX100a. I'm not sure how slow the shutter can be set for the original DVX100, but it might not be slow enough to produce this effect. Try it out with the slowest shutter speed you can achieve and let us know!

Jaime is correct -- took the words out of my mouth

I know a guy who does a lot of looooong exposures with still photography -- as in having a shutter open for hours. Some of it is really beautiful stuff. And difficult to reproduce in video, just like really good, film-like slo-mo is hard to do in video.

I image that you could do a combo of slow shutter speed with layering multiple copies of the shot in After Effects, with each layer being slightly advanced in time, with the opacities set at 30%-50%. Maybe add some blending modes like Overlay as well...

And make sure you've got one sturdy and steady tripod!

small assist
 

easy access ...

http://www.illconcepts.com/highway.jpg

THere is a difference between using a slow shutter for a single photograph and for video. Obviously, if your video is playing back at 24 or 30fps, any shutter speed slower than that will not give you smooth motion. For a single photo however, your exposure can be as long as you want it to be. Therefore, my question is, what type of effect are you really trying to achieve. Do you want a long exposure video? If so I have been doing some experiments with this. First prize goes to anyone that can figure out how I did it. If you think about it, it really isn't that hard.

Here is the link
http://www.stefweb.net/test.mov
Sorry for the compression, I wanted everyone to be able to view it easily.

I am trying to achieve the streaming light effect from traffic during a time lapse on video...

I guess your movie was done with a series of still photos... put together as a sequence?!?

what your looking for is motion blur...

motion blur will blur anything in your scene that has motion, in your example the cars would be nothing but streaks of light going by but the light poll would remain untouched

we do this a lot, especially with subway shots...very cool effect


but you have to remmeber that objects that are not moving need to be kept still other wise the audience will not be fooled...

i know of no way to re-create that in a video camera, adjusting the shutter will stutter the cars but not make them smooth...

hmmmm...

i'll try the motion blur effect in after effects... Im also going to try an echo effect on the video... with blur... maybe that could do it?!?

Correct me if I am wrong, but the standard Motion Blur effect in After Effects only applies to objects animated within AE, does it not?

I've always though that the Motion Blur option (as available via the checkbox in the Timeline) did *not* affect any preexisiting motion within a clip. Have I been using MB incorrectly (or at least not to its full potential) all this time?

John,

You are correct, but i wasn't talking about ae at all, and i should have specified that ...I was talking about my canopus card where it's called motion blur...

i looked in my ae toolbox and could not find a filter that does this...but i'm sure there must be one out there...

look for motion blur, or trail...(ps i have tinder box trail plugin it does not do the same thing)

Try "Frame Blending" when you speed up your footage in After Effects.

Wow, stefan, that is a cool effect. I don't guess i'll get first prize, because all i can think of is that you kept the camera open using long exposure times , but then the moon would be a streak instead of moving across the sky. it seems like a combo some how of interval exposure and long shutter speeds. Anyway, it has been over a week, perhaps you would email me and tell me how you have done it. ( I need a similar effect, different application) or you could give us all an early Christmas present and tell us here. I am VERY interested! Thanks for showing the clip!

Ozan biron was pretty close. All you need is a good 35MM slr, good tripod, chalk and a measuring tape. I went down to a street corner at about 7:30pm and took my measuring tape and measured about 15ft across this corner. I then made marks with the chalk starting every 1/4 inch, then 1/2 inch and finally going up to about 2 inches. These marks were basically tripod placements. I wanted it to ease in and out hence starting with teh quarter inch. I had two identical lines for two of the tripod legs, this let me keep the camera pointed in a single direction. I used 100ASA Kodak gold with a 35 sec exposure on each frame. This was kind of a test so next time I want to use a dolly to get a much smoother motion. I'm a digital artist at a local photography store, so I got my film developed for free. I think I used 5 rolls alltogether. I then scanned each frame and imported them into after effects 6. I used the steady move plugin (without zoom) to smooth out the motion. I made each frame about 15% larger than the 720x480 so that the steady move plugin would not lose any resolution when evening out my footage. So that's my secret, I hope this helps. By the way it is a slow and tedious process, so make sure you have lots of time on your hands. It took about 2 1/2 hours to film and about another 1 1/2 for the after effects work, all for a 5 second shot.

Thanks, I appreciate the reply and I appreciate your skill and cleverness in working all that out.

Obtaining this effect in video is impossible. Try using a Nizo super8 camera. It's perfect for this kind of job and gives a superb quality.

AH HA! Ive done it!!! "It is possbile"

Take a look of my VIDEO test i did with my 100a... still needs a little tweaking but gives the same effect as film!

Take a look...

http://www.illconcepts.com/videotest.mpg

care to tell us how u did it? can i do that with my dvx100 (no "a")?

Wow, that is definitely a nice effect. Do tell!