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Time lapse of building construction….6 weeks?
I have to time lapse a small business being razed, and a new one built in it’s place.
I have found several formulas for time lapse of clouds, etc., but I’m still in question as to the best approach to “frame ratio rate” for an event that will take about 6 weeks or so to complete.
I do want the video to look fairly smooth, and can always speed it up in FCP if it were too long. And I really don’t know how long a video like this should lasts for optimum effect.30 sec? 1 minute? 3 minutes?
“So what would be a good frame rate starting point for such a lengthy job?”
Thanks…
Jonny Cates
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5 Replies
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I would base the estimates solely off of playback time. A minute in length is a good target for a casual viewer.
So lets take a minute at 29.97fps (lets call it 30 to make the math easy)
30 frames x 60 seconds = 1800 frames
6 weeks x 7 days x 24 hours x 60 mins x 60 seconds = 3,628,800 seconds
3,628,800/1,800 = 1 frame every 2016 seconds, or about 1 frame every 33 minutes
If you want to give it some buffer time you could drop down to one frame every 24 minutes or something.
Angelo Lorenzo
Fallen Empire – Digital Production Services -
Wow Angelo! I don’t know what the heck I was thinking, but my brain was way off on this figure. But this make perfect math sense.
Anyway, I plan on shooting this with an iPhone 4 and going to suction-cup the phone inside a nearby local business’s window. I downloaded a FREE Time Lapse AP call “Motion Pics.” I’ve tested it on a short run, and it seems to work as described.
Let cha-ya know how it turns out in Sept….
Thanks a lot!
Jonny Cates
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depending on how you want to account for down time (like weekends and nights) you may want to figure that into the equation… if you don’t want weekends, then you’d plugin in 5 days per week. if you only wanted working hours, then you may only want to plan for 8-12 hours per day….
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
Good point Kevin. Hadn’t thought about that.
One thought that has occurred to me; Is there going to be any problem leaving an iPhone 4 in the “on” position, lets say, for 8 to 12 hours a day? There is no way (as far as I know), to make the screen go black during use – other than maybe setting the brightness to the lowest. Didn’t know if there would be an eventual build-up of heat that might cause a problem in saving the file. Would hate to go through all this and lose it because of a glitch…. Any thoughts?
Thanks again…
Jonny Cates
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I’d consider using a proper DSLR or a Go Pro.
Autofocus can make your timelapse “breathe” as it different subjects in the scene catch its interest. It might be better to lock off focus.
The Color Stabilizer effect [link] can be used to reduce flicker in timelapse photography.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
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