Making a Timelapse video?

[Cut ter]

Any on out there knows how to make a time lapse video using your capture card with no device controler.
Are there any specs or rules to use. like how many frames do time lapse cameras capture / time?

[DrMordrid]

Your best bet is Microsofts VidCap program. This comes as part of the On-Line Producer package which is free at Microsofts download site.

VidCap is capable of stop-frame captures to a video file where a mouse click, spacebar or letter "C" will trigger a frame being captured and appended to the file.

An event recording program could automate the process as could a timer driven solenoid mounted over the keyboard.

You could also just stand there and hit the key yourself, but that wouldn't be any fun ;-))

In it's normal video capture mode you can get frame rates down as far as 1 frame/second.

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by DrMordrid (edited 29 October 1999).]

[Rick6612]

Hi Cut ter,

The Ulead Video Capture program allows you to capture one frame at a time. My kids and I have used this feature to make a little animated video with a bunch of Hot Wheels cars racing around a race track. It came out OK for a first attempt.

I'm not sure if it would automatically capture frames at certain intervals over a period of time, which is what you probably need in order to do time lapse. I guess you could just set a timer for yourself, and everytime the timer rings, go hit enter on your PC to capture another frame.

As for how many frames to capture and how often to capture them, you would need to decide how long a period of time you wish to cover, and how long you want your finished time lapse video to be.

For example, if you want your finished video to be 1 minute long, you would need to capture a total of 60 seconds x 29.97 frames/second (NTSC) = 1788 frames. If your goal was to capture 5 hours (18000 seconds) worth of action in your 1 minute time lapse video, then you would need to capture 1 frame approximately every 10 seconds (18000 seconds / 1788 frames = 10.06711409396). Hopefully I did all my math right...

If you use PAL, then use 25 frames per second instead of 29.97 in the above formulas.

Rick

[Cut ter]

Thanks for all replies,
This sounds like fun I shall give it a try.
Now that I have an indication of how to calculate the # of frames I am going to plan my video.