Creating Time-Lapse Video

I've been shooting and stitching a lot of time-lapse frames together lately, in a variety of environments, a mix of business and pleasure. A few example videos from my YouTube playlist follow.

Without any formal training, there was a lot of trial and error involved. What follows is the basic procedure I use to create time-lapse video.

ℹ️ As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (details)

Collecting the Imagery

I tend use the following gear:

The battery on the GoPro only lasts a couple hours, so the skeleton housing is key for long (read: 6-8 hours) shoots; just plug in AC power and you're good to go. It also protects the lens against spit, sweat, and splashed beverages, something the open frame can't provide.

I use the time-lapse function on the GoPro, the only settings I tweak are around image quality and interval.

Image Quality

5 MP images are more than sufficient for creating high-definition (1920x1080) videos for upload to YouTube, but they aren't super-wide, so I go with 7 MP.

10 MP images are too much, it creates extremely large (resolution) files that:

reduce the number of stills your camera can hold
increase the transfer time from the camera
creates larger intermediate video
end up being downsampled later, which takes longer

If you want to create 4K video you'll want to stick with the higher resolutions, although to date there really aren't a lot of platforms where you can tell the difference.

Interval

Calculating interval is a function of how long the final video needs to be and how smooth the motion needs to be. Most folks won't watch a video longer than a minute or two unless they're really engaged in the content or have something specific they're measuring (i.e. foot traffic at a conference booth). I aim for the final video being somewhere in the 1.5 to 2 minute range.

For landscapes the interval can be a lot longer than for people-motion, say 30-60 seconds. For people-motion I usually go with a 10 second interval, although for short clips I may go as low as 1 second. For the turkey carving, I knew it'd be a short session so I used a 0.5s interval. It's better to take more than less, since you can always drop every other frame before stitching.

There are plenty of time-lapse calculators available on the Internet, although I usually end up jotting down the figures by hand.

Transferring the Images

I transfer all the source files to an SSD-backed disk, one folder per video. The mini-USB connection feels slower than mounting the microSD card directly, although it usually isn't worth the hassle of removing the camera from the case.

Stitching the Stills

Zeitraffer is a beautifully simple program that takes a folder full of stills and stitches them together, however many frames per second you choose. Zeitraffer is available from the Mac App Store.

I usually use 30fps, but sometimes 24fps. I leave the other settings alone.

After processing, the result is a QuickTime video in 4:3 format.

Formatting the Video

To finish the thing, I use iMovie to reformat/crop the video into 16:9 (as preferred by YouTube and modern televisions).

For comparison, consider this behind the scenes mixing video: raw 4:3 versus the cropped 16:9 version.

In iMovie:

create a new project, 16:9 format, no template
File >> Import >> Movies…
create a new event
import the QuickTime video that Zeitraffer generated
crop the video down to 16:9 format
Share >> Export movie

The result is a QuickTime video in 16:9 format, sans sound, but otherwise suitable for upload to YouTube.

Adding Audio

I usually find royalty-free music on YouTube and add it after-the-fact. Nothing fancy, there.

Last Modified: 2016-11-25

Home | All Entries | Search | Errata