Timelapse from DSLR stills

[Curious Turtle]

FCP doesn’t handle image sequences in an efficient way. You’re best off converting this to a QT movie first. An easy way to do that is just in Quicktime Player:

i) File > Open Image Sequence
ii) File > Export – to desired codec (and resolution!)
iii) Bring it back into FCP and edit to your heart’s content.

You can easily work with image sequences in Motion too, if you want to do a push or something special on your large images.

Hope that helps,
Ben

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[Norman Pogson]

If you buy Quicktime Pro for $30 and the image sequence are numbered sequentially, you just click on the first and last image and Quicktime will import the group. Then you can export the movie to FCP for editing.

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[Curious Turtle]

You’ll already have the required Quicktime bundled as part of the Final Cut suite. So you’ve got all the tools you need.

Cheers,
Ben

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[Richard Harrington]

I find that importing the image into AE is MUCH easier. You can easily combine keyframes for zooms and pans and have precise control on rendered codec and frame rate.

Richard M. Harrington, PMP

Author: Video Made on a Mac, Photoshop for Video, Understanding Adobe Photoshop, Final Cut Studio On the Spot and ATS:iWork

[Alan Lacey]

You can import image sequences into Motion as well, if you don’t have AE.

Alan

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[Brynn Sankey]

This is in fact very easy.

BEFORE importing your stills, open up the User Preferences dialog (Final Cut Pro>User Preferences…) and click on the “Editing” tab. At the very top left you will see “Still/Freeze Duration.” Change the value to “00:00:00;01” and then import your images. Their default length upon import will be 1 frame, so then you can just “select all” and drop them on the timeline.

If you already imported your stills before making the above change in the Prefs, simply delete them from the browser, make the change and then re-import them.

[Alan Lacey]

Yes but sometimes impractiable!

I used to do this with animation sequences exported as numbered bitmap sequences, but every frame appears individually on the TL and more importantly it takes FCP forever to open as it checks whether every frame is online before opening!! Hopeless for animations of hundreds/thousands of frames

OK that was v4.5 but I assume the later versions do the same.

Alan

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[Curious Turtle]

Yes, highly impractical with any length of timelapse. And if you haven’t already downscaled your pictures then you leave yourself open to the vagaries of FCP scaling. Even with a nested composition, this would be my least favoured method. It’s possible but I wouldn’t do it.

Far better and easier to deal with a QT, as I wrote in my initial post. Whatever way you do that, Quicktime Player, Motion, or After Effects (if you have it) is up to you. As I and others have said, using Motion or AE allows you to do more with regards to camera movement too.

Cheers,
Ben

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[Alan Lacey]

Ben, you obviously have both AE and Motion like me. Which would you choose to use for something like this and why?

Personally I prefer AE but often go to Motion for quick and nasty!

Alan

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[Curious Turtle]

Generally I do the same as you. After Effects mainly, Motion for a quick hit. Grain and grading tools are better in After Effects IMO. I do like the ease of sticking a quick Behaviour on a camera in Motion though!

Also, if it’s something that’s going to take a while to re-render, I will always render out a Quicktime even from Motion rather than just importing and using the Motion project directly on a FCP timeline. That way I can be sure that I can slice it and dice it any way I want without getting an unexpected red line pop up when FCP decides that I’ve done too much to one of its own render files.

Cheers,
Ben

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