Timelapse Video from Stills

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

Here is a fairly comprehensive guide on how to make a video from timelapse stills. Be warned - the author has a quirky sense of humour that you may not connect with. Also, near the end, some inclusion of Anglo-Saxon vocabulary (four letter words to you and me! - but then 'work' is a four letter word ).
http://graemeh.wordpress.com/2010/12/19 ... lr-camera/

[Steve Grisetti]

Nothing like a teacher who swears like a sailor, John.

Great link though!

[Chuck Engels]

Thanks for the advanced warning John

[momoffduty]

Thanks! Bookmarked.

[videovillageidiot]

John - thank you so much for the link! After seeing the aurora timelapse that "Mom" posted a few days ago I called my son and told him he needed to get into timelapse and directed him to the post. "Why don't you do it?" he asked and i told him because he takes great photos and would probably do a really good job of it, since he likes to try things out. He didn't seem much inclined to do it but...the very next nite he called me to ask how to edit a timelapse in Moviemaker because he had shot over a thousand (2, maybe 3 thousand?) photos since our discussion!!! i didn't know what to tell him, but i'm hoping that link will explain it all!

He has warned me not to say "I told you so" since he claims he was already interested in doing timelapse before i encouraged him. gotta' love my kid!!!

and also gotta' love Muvipix - we barely think of a question and someone answers it!!!

[Kitwn]

That's an interesting article but does contain a few errors worth pointing out:

Most intervalometers (including the $20 Chinese one I've got for my Sony dSLR) have the 'interval' as a fixed time regardless of exposure duration. In other words, a 'fire!' command is issued at regular intervals and if the camera exposure is too long, or the camera is not ready to take another picture for whatever reason, this will simply be ignored and the frame dropped.

Avoiding flicker due to frame by frame variation of exposures is a critical requirement in the timelapsers armory and is not just tolerated as suggested. See the forum at Timescapes.org for more details or I'll write a longer post if requested.

If you use Premiere Elements then making a video from your stack of JPEG photos is easy: Tell your camera to use consecutive numbers for it's output frames (DCS0001, DCS0002 etc) and set it's output resolution to something sensible (NOT 4000 x 3000 pixels!!!!!!!!!!!!!). In the 'get media' dialogue in pre simply select the first frame in the sequence and tick the 'Numbered Stills' box at the bottom ( I use v7) then 'open' . You will see an icon for this frame appear in the media panel. Drag this onto the timeline as normal, it's actually the whole sequence.
Don't bother trying to watch it yet, you can't. Either render the timeline (resulting in a JPEG sequence which is watchable) or the best option is to immediately export it ('FILE', 'EXPORT') as a 'Microsoft Uncompressed AVI'. This will take some minutes but you then have a normal AVI file with which you can replace the JPEG sequence on the timeline and edit just like any other video.

Have fun!

Kit

[Kent Frost]

Tell your camera to use consecutive numbers for it's output frames (DCS0001, DCS0002 etc) and set it's output resolution to something sensible (NOT 4000 x 3000 pixels!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

I actually find shooting full-resolution RAW files comes in very handy when shooting timelapses. Especially with products like this available. The more resolution you have, the more leeway you have: