time lapse video

[TDoodle]

Great job on lining up the stills! Interesting to see how the seasons change. How many stills did you have? And what duration for each? Thanks for posting back the end result.

I think I had them at 00h:00m:00s:15 long
I had 156 pictures.....156 days......

I figured it out the one day (after I had it all done):

It took roughly 5 minutes a day to take the pictures (to get to the dock take the pics, and then get back to where I was).....780 minutes = 13 hours
Took another 5 minutes a day to go through all the pictures and get the best one to line for the previous day).....780 minutes = 13 hours (Total 26 hours)
Took another hour to line all the pictures up in Photoshop = 1 hour (Total 27 hours)
Then getting them in Final Cut Express and cutting all the pics to the same length, getting the transitions in (and then fixing them) = Roughly 4 hours (Total 31 hours)
Then changing the music and final copyright screen (3 times) because the original music I had fought with YouTube (and UMG)'s copyright fiasco = Another hour

SO I spent 32 hours on a 1 minute long video.
But I did learn a few things during this experience, in case if I ever do decide to do this again.

[momoffduty]

Thank you very much for the process description. Editing at times is a lot more work than most people think. And editing starts before you take the photo or video. Wow, 32 hours for 1 minute!! Good thing the love of editing most times is "priceless". The pure joy.

[Ron Hunter]

Great video! I think you did an outstanding job! The color change in the last section was very dramatic, as Dave said.

Editing time; yes, editing takes a lot of time. Nobody but the editor knows how much time is poured into a project. Of course, if the video is done well the viewer won't think about the editing. Unless the viewer IS an editor (everyone here), in which case they will be blown away.

Once upon a time I estimated 1 hour of editing for every minute of video, but that is just an estimate and it depends on a LOT of variables. I haven't taken on a project this large and with so many steps, so maybe it would take days per minute?

Question; it seemed as if the building outline was slightly warped from time to time throughout the video. Is that a Photoshop thing, or perhaps the camera wasn't in "exactly" the same position from shot to shot? I mean no offense, I'm asking because I have the same sort of project going on with seasons changing at my home.

Another question; does anyone know if the "line up the images" function is included in Photoshop Elements? I have V10 and I can't find it.

[Bob]

Another question; does anyone know if the "line up the images" function is included in Photoshop Elements? I have V10 and I can't find it.

In Photoshop, that's the "auto-align layers" command. I don't believe that is included in Photoshop Elements. But, I think you can do something similar using Photomerge Panorama. Photomerge Panorama only works with individual files though. Assuming each layer is saved as a separate file (as would be the case with the individual photos you took over time), use New>Photomerge Panorama and select the files you want to align. After the process is complete, you should have the photos as individual aligned layers with a layer mask. The layer masks are added by the blending function, but you can delete them or fill them with white.

[TDoodle]

Question; it seemed as if the building outline was slightly warped from time to time throughout the video. Is that a Photoshop thing, or perhaps the camera wasn't in "exactly" the same position from shot to shot? I mean no offense, I'm asking because I have the same sort of project going on with seasons changing at my home.

The reason why the building warped like that happened for a few reasons....
1 - When I took the picture I had to wait until the last fly out left (they have an otter plane on floats that go to outlying lakes). Reason for waiting is because where I stood, the back fin and tail of the plane took up 25% of the picture. So those days, the plane never ended up going out because of wind. So I had to stand slightly closer and adjust the focal length, so there would be slightly less of the plane in the picture
2 - Sometimes (happened just a couple times) when I stood in the correct spot I accidentally had the focal length on 40mm as opposed to 35mm for all the other pictures
3 - Then the main reason why it happened, is when I put the pictures into PS to align the pictures, the program used certain points of the building to line them all up. And for that to happen it ended up warping the building.

So because of that, if I decided to do something like this again, I am gonna make sure that I don't have to wait for something (the plane) to leave, that I have a 100% totally unobstructed view 100% of the time. And I always stood in the same spot (other than those few days), but I ended up taking 60-70 pictures everyday to get the best picture to line up to the day previous, I'm gonna use a tripod mounted to something so all I have to do is put my camera on it and take about 10 pictures.
Those are the biggest things that I'm gonna focus on if I do it again. Another thing, is that I'm gonna take a few pictures each day and put it in there. As opposed to doing 1 picture/day, just so it will do a little bit better transition.

If I decide to do this again, I'll let you know

Thanks for all the positive feedback on the project