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time lapse pinwheel explosion
Hi all,
I shot a spur of the moment time lapse in the backyard the other day. One of the neighbor kids had stuck a bright, multi-colored pinwheel in the ground. It was windy and the pinwheel spun continually but at different speeds. It was mostly sunny with a few clouds skidding across the sky. The camera and subject were in dappled shade for 95 % of the shoot. I shot manual and tried to hit the middle for exposure given the constant change in light due to trees blowing, clouds and the sun’s arc. I shot fast, 1/3200th as I wanted to freeze the pinwheel while the out of focus background shimmered. ISO 160, Medium JPEG. It came out well and I really like it. A bit blown out at the end, but nothing terrible. Some flicker, but with the out of focus background and the conditions I think it works.
I did some color correction, etc. in Bridge/Camera Raw then opened it in After Effects. Worked on it a bit more: color, contrast — and then rendered it (1920×1080). I’ve tried rendering it in a variety of formats and various codecs with the same result. The pinwheel breaks up. It’s like a ceramic plate cracking but not falling apart. Is it simply that the bright, spinning, multi-colored pinwheel simply contains too much data to render well/correctly? Is it the formats/codecs I’ve used that are the problem (Quicktime/h.264, h.264/mp4, quicktime/mpeg4…). Should a 52 second time lapse take 5 hours and change to render? Should I have used Bridge/camera raw? Or something else?
This is my first time lapse editing adventure, and first use of After Effects. My knowledge of formats and compression codecs is nil. I use the Adobe production suite on a PC. My desire is to use formats and codecs best suited to Vimeo and a web site of my own I’ll be starting in a few months. Any specific information about this specific pinwheel issue and/or what software combo, and formats/codecs to use for Vimeo and web use would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
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1 Reply
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Thanks for the reply, Dave.
I don’t know. I am shooting with a Canon 7d, Zeiss 35mm. The individual frames are fine. The composition clip looks fine in AE when previewing. Runs well, smoothly, no pinwheel breakup. When it starts to render you can see the problem. Also in the final rendered clip. I thought maybe it was an artifact of the rendering process. Simply the way it “looked” as it rendered. But it’s in the final re-formatted/compressed clip also. And the breakup only seems to occur within the pinwheel. The rest of the frame looks fine.
An acquaintance recently told me not to download from camera into Bridge, as it changes color data. So I don’t. Though, once again, the individual frames seem fine, prior and after editing.
I tried to use a piece of software called LRTimelapse to smooth out the flicker and exposure, but it kept freezing up. I don’t know if I dragged something along from there into AE. But, once again, the composition clip looked fine in preview.
Sorry this is so roundabout. I like a good puzzle, and this is baffling me. I’m assuming there’s some setting or combinations of settings that I have wrong that is throwing things off.
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