Time Lapse with still camera
 

Hi folks,
I found an article a few weeks ago and thought I had bookmarked it :(

I want to create a "time lapse" video for a background.....30 seconds of moving clouds. I have an Olympus E10 that is capable of "interval" exposures so that's not an issue, but I need some help with the math. I would assume that 30 still photos at 1 second intervals would work...or possibly 60 exposures at 1/2 second intervals?

Will I have to place each photo individually on the timeline (in Vegas 6) in sequential manner or is there another method that might be used.

Your assistance is appreciated.

David Bird

File - Import - Media, pick the first picture, then check the "Image Sequence" box. Each picture will be one frame long and the entire sequence will be a single event on the timeline.

Keep in mind that 30 seconds of video is either 900 (NTSC - 30 frames/sec.) or 750 frames (PAL - 25 frames/sec.).
If you only use 30 photos in 30 sec., the video may look somewhat choppy.
Is there any reason you don't want to shoot it with a camcorder and then use Vegas to speed it up as desired?

Edward,
Thanks....after additional research, it appears that it will take many, many more images than I thought...I'm wanting a look of the clouds moving rapidly across the screen...still reading various artiles on "how to"
David

Mike,
Not really....although I'm not really sure how to do this with my video cam and with Vegas, either...
David

If you have a miniDV camcorder, set it up on a tripod (very important!!) and shoot as much cloud footage as you want.
Bring this footage into Vegas and put it on the timeline.
Right click on the clip and choose "properties". Change the playback rate from 1.0 to 4.0. It's now 4X faster.
Now right click the clip again and select "insert - velocity envelope". This palces a blue line on the clip. Drag it up to the top for a further 3X speed increase.
You've now sped up the video by a factor of 12 (i.e. 12 minutes real time = 1 minute of video). If this isn't fast enough for you, render this segment out, bring it back to the timeline and do the same 2 things again.
Have fun and ask for help if you need it. We're all here to help.

Just wanted to add that a faster way to do the same thing is to simply hold down the control key while resizing (shortening) the clip on the timeline. A zig-zag will appear on the clip to indicate that the playback rate has been adjusted.

Thanks folks....works for me. Actually, 900 stills is not my idea of having fun.
Regards - David Bird

This discussion prompts me to ask another question:

I'm using a Canon HV20 and the HD file sizes are incredibly large. A 10 second clip can be 150mb after rendering. Taking a 10-15 minute video would probably require more hard disk space than I want to even imagine.

Would speeding it up and consequently shortening the time length via playback rate/velocity reduce the rendered file size? Or would all the frames still be there, but it's just running faster?

Speeding it up and rendering out that version would create a smaller file.

Perfect!!
I'll do some experimenting.

Thanks Edward

Ok here's the data:

Rendered a 5 second HD clip into a .mov (with only 50% quality) and got 32mb file.

Increased playback by 10X and file size was reduced to 29 mb (-10%)

Considering that I will most likely want at least 90% quality, the file size would grow exponentially at normal playback and drop only 10% at 10X.

So I guess there's no getting around humongously super large file sizes for 30 minute time lapse clips - other than using a digicam and creating individual frames at a constant interval.

Is my logic correct?