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Creating Time Lapse Sequence In PPRO
I have a client who is shooting a building construction site for the next two years with a digital camera and saving the 1600×1200 JPEG images to a computer. Images are taken every minute.
They would like to tranfer the stills (at various construction phases) to DVD as time lapse movie sequences. The ‘demolition’ phase has ended and I figure there will be approximately 10,000 images to ‘speed up’ after I edit out the non-working night time shots etc. They would like the final demolition sequence to run approximately 5 minutes, showing the old building coming down.
Does anyone know of a good, simple technique to accomplish this with my existing Premiere Pro system, which consists of Pro, Audtion & Encore? I do not have Photoshop. The images now reside on a computer at the construction site. So, I figure I will have to use an external harddrive to transfer them to my PPRO system.
Once in PPRO how do I change that many images from 1600 X 1200 to 720 X 480, and how do I speed up the motion of 3 weeks worth of images? I have only been able to speed up video in PPRO to 10,000 percent, which might work, but I’m not sure that will be fast enough.
I have been told that time-lapse is a simple thing to do in Vegas, but I am not up to another learning curve at this point and would like to use my PPRO system.
Thanks for any information.
Wendall
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9 Replies
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If you have:
1 frame per minute over 2 years, that is 249600 frames over 2 years, if you figure 5 days a week x 8 hours a day, which at 1 frame per image is 8320 seconds which is 138 minutes.So export that as an AVI then play with speed changes.
Or, you probably don’t even need all those frames. Given a wide shot of a 2 year project, how likely is it that there will be 480 interesting frames/day. Unless large girders/foundations/roof sections etc are being hoisted into position every day, there will be some boredom.
You might find a way to keep track of what happens each day, and then on the boring days use fewer images.
Or, maybe have them take pictures once every 10 minutes – every 1 minute might be excessive – that is unless you are doing things which are fast, which in construction is unlikely.
As far as image size, if you are not zooming or panning, 720×480 is all you need. Photoshop will let you automate this, although there are probably many free apps also. Check out Tom’s Downloads.
Good luck
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Thank you for the quick response Mike. Yes, I figured about 480 frames per day. Of course, I intend to edit out all of the nighttime and other non-esstial footage. Unfortuately, I’m locked into 1 frame every minute, as the cameras they are using are also showing the progress ‘live’ on the internet.
You mentioned there is other software besides Photoshop which would let me ‘automate’ the ‘re-sizing’ process. It would be a great help if you could name a couple of those, as I’m not quite sure what to look for.
Also, would Photoshop Elements 4.0 handle this task, and is it worth buying?
Have I covered all my bases…is there anything else I should know before tackling this project?
Thanks.
Wendall
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One of your bigger problems may be budgeting. If they’re not finishing the building for two years, how many “interim versions” are you going to do before that – or are you not going to look at it until the building is finished?
I’d guess you might want a couple of early “tests” to validate process / show up any probs to you and client.
I’d also guess it will save you a whole lot of time if you resize in PPro – otherwise you really probably want a batch processing script in Photoshop or your resizing will take forever.
You could simply drop shorter lengths of stills ( a week at a time?) into timelines, set your speed acceleration and render a rescale then .. if you’se skipping lots of frames then that’s lots of resizing you don’t have to do/
And of course in two years time, you’ll maybe be delivering this on BluRay or HD DVD in high definition ….
AND you’ll be using PPro 3 on a 64 bit Vista system with bags of RAM, so a heavy stills sequence might not slow you down too much!
I’ve timelapsed successfully here with PPro. I found it necessary to edit the source footage a fair bit to keep things interesting.
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Thanks for responding Mike. I am doing just the ‘demolition’ time-lapse at this point. I’m not sure how many versions they will want before it’s all said and done. In fact, they may not even do this segment when they find out it’s not going to be a snap to create!
I noticed you mentioned that you EDIT your time-lapse footage (frames) a good bit. I beleive that’s the case on this project as well, in order to keep the video movisng moving. Do you just put the entire (week or whatever time frame) on to the PPRO time-line, edit out sections not desired, then ‘speed’ up the edited segments? I tried a video clip yesterday and could only go up to 10,000 per cent.
Also, HOW do you ‘re-scale’ in Premiere Pro (on the time-line as you mentioned) AND is it a time consuming process? I would be re-sizing about 10,000 edited frames at 1600 x 1200 to 720 X 480.
Thanks.
Wendall
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Download and try the free IrFanview here:
It batch resizes still pictures and convert them to a different file-type if required.
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Thanks for the tip Andre. I recently downloaded Irfanview (which I like a lot.) I didn’t know it had that capability.
Much appreciated.
Wendall
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I have done almost the same thing with Premiere 5.4 and Photoshop long time a go. Most of my work I have done also with ACDsee. We have shot construction site for a shopping mall for a two years period also. We have filmed with an very old 35mm motion picture camera with custom made electronic trigger. (Digital phototography and HD was then just a dream…) We have recorded only 12 pictures a day, and change film roll every week. Camera was screwed in a large concrete block on a balcony in a nearby building. Result was then procesed and telecined to betacam SP video, and then captured to PC for editing. Even with that low count of frames per day I have also done lots of editing. Most anoying with this kind of animation is changes in a light. You have to keep logical and uniform duration of each day without to dark and to brite parts of it. That keeps focus of your viewer to a construction site and not on a shadow/lite traveling. Because we have so little frame count we have make every frame 3 frame long and blend one frame with next frame on both sides. In that way we have more seamles animation and more seamless light from one frame to another. We have used only 8 frames to represent one day. After we finished editing we have made EDL for Film edit and we have done 35mm film print from this to see this in a theater. Result was astonishing. Today with Premiere Pro I would do this without resizing. Now is HD age and you will be sorry if you dont do this in HD. Once you got HD final of your project You can always go back to SD. After Effects will do much better job in resizing but with little experiment you can do it in PPro too. Just open PPro SD timeline and Import your finished HD movie in it, in motion effect make your size to the percent you need ( beware of your pixel aspect ratio ) If your animation flickers on a video monitor in motion effect put anti flicker to 0,5-0,8. Keep your frame count to a managable level. I have make one day of a construction from one week of shooting time during snowy winter, and during very hot sommer, and when they start to build interior. Keep in maind that there is no action when they build part of the building that is behind what is already build and this is blocking your view when they are at the hight of your camera. Is your camera position and lens widenes good enough from begining to end of the construction? Beware that your building dont overgrow your final shot. Final shot is very important. I comes like a bonus, we have motion picture camera so we shoot a real footage for it from a same place. We have made this like slowing down to real time at sunset when building has lights and people is in front of it, walking and hanging…If you want to do this project right you have to spend lots of time with it. No automation will help you much, make your decision on a base of some experiment in how much frames you need for representing one day for final duration and make some bussines every day or once a week. BTW, Automation will also skip frames ( 10000 speed up…) and only hopefully not the very good ones.
Sorry for a long post.
Igor -
Igor,
Thank you you very much for the in-depth information. It is very helpful. We have not begun the actual time-lapse project yet, because the client is dragging his feet. I told him it will be VERY TIME CONSUMING to do the project right (and quite costly.) I plan to experiment by using a small section of the saved video frames. Your information will be especially helpful when it comes to ‘exposure control’, ‘re-sizing’ and getting rid of the ‘flicker’. Much appreciated!
Wendall
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No problem. Email me if you need any further assistance.
igor( at )project6( dot )hr
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