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These time lapse plans look OK?
I’m going to run a test on this soon but I’d be interested if anyone here has had experience with this:
I’m considering shooting several series of digital stills over perhaps 20-30 minute time periods (at a frame rate yet to be determined) for a time-lapse video sequence. The raw image size will be 2464 x 1648. These time-lapse sequences will be cut into a 720p 59.94 fps video production in Final Cut. I’d like to bring the series of stills into After Effects in order to assemble them into movies and also to impart some subtle camera moves or zooms on the time lapse. I’m assuming that I can do this while maintaining high def image quality because I’ll be starting with such large, high def files and my output is 720p.
Anyway, my bottom line question is whether any of this looks problematic or if anyone here with experience doing this can provide any words of wisdom that might help to guide our field production. Also, I’m just assuming that After Effects can handle the large frame size I noted above. I’ll be doing this on an 8-core Mac.
Thanks.
– Ron
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7 Replies
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Hi,
You should not have any problems with the frame sizes and you should have a good range to pan or zoom within the image.
You may already have experience with this, but since it created a problem for me on some early time lapse, I thought I’d mention it… Make sure that all the exposure, color balance, focus and what not are in manual mode when you shoot the time lapse. Even auto white balance can cause ugly flickering from frame to frame. Also if you are shooting in RAW mode, have you made sure you have a good work flow for converting the images to tif for later import to AE?
Lars
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Hi Lars,
Your point about manual settings is a very good one. I’ve had some experience with this while shooting timelapse with a video camera, too. Thanks for the reminder.As for working with raw images and converting to tif, I do know that I have to do this but I have not thought about the workflow yet. Haven’t done that before. If you have words of wisdom and experience I certainly would appreciate them.
Cheers,
Ron -
Hi Dave,
Thanks. Well, I clearly have some work to do to get up-to-speed on this endeavor. I do have experience with exposure anomalies on time-lapse sequences so your point on working in 32-bit mode is well-taken. But as for “animating” AE’s Levels and effect settings, do you know of any tutorials on that (in case I need them)? Or perhaps the manual will do that for me? Although I’m a longtime user of AE, I know that my knowledge only scratches the surface of its capabilities.
Now I’ll try to find out in AE can handle the flavor of raw files we’ll be generating.
Ron
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[Ron Craig] “Now I’ll try to find out in AE can handle the flavor of raw files we’ll be generating.
“Do you mean the camera raw files? Don’t bother, you gain nothing staying in raw. It merely adds a complex layer of pre-processing. You want to process all of your stills in a batch in Photoshop or the native image editor for your camera. You will need properly numbered images to import as a sequence. However, I disagree with some of the suggested workflows but only as a matter of practicality. there is no reason to over-resolve your assembly format unless you absolutely must.
I often post to timelapse threads with a long list of online timelapse resources. I’m not at that computer today, don’t have the list, but you should be able to search for the topic and filter to my username.
The best timelapse photography is done with still images from DSLR or simple point and shoot cameras, set to manual focus and manual exposure.
If your realtime event is less than 40 minutes, you can shoot your HD video and then speed it up but do NOT shoot timelapse video unless your camera will do single frames. Use a fast shutter speed is general advice but depends on your exposure needs and look and feel. You can always add stylization filters but you can’t easily go back and sharpen blurred motion.bogiesan
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Hi bogiesan,
I’m going to do the thread search that you advised right away. Your comments all make sense. I’m leaning back toward shooting regular speed with the HDX 900 and then doing the speed changes in post because my sequences will be only about 20-30 minutes long. It seems that digital SLR still cameras can’t shoot frames quickly enough to give me the frame speed I need. Correct me if I’m wrong. Do you know of a still camera that can reliably shoot 3-4 fps over that period of time? I’d love it if I could do that because of the additional opportunities that would give me in AE but I’m running up against limitations of frame buffers and memory cards.
Ron
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I have done this many times in videos for SONIC restaurants (showing restaurant re-branding) and it works GREAT. Having a large resolution image sequence in After Effects that can be animated (pans, zooms, what have you) is the bomb and my clients thought I used some expensive motion control animation rig. Do it!
Regards,
Chris Gomersall
http://www.upstairsmedia.com -
Hi Chris,
I certainly see the appeal of this approach. My issue, though is the number of frames per second that I can get with the digital still camera. What frame rate did you use? How did you select that frame rate? Do you have any examples online? Thanks.
Ron
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