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Best Framerate For Time Lapse

Smurfy8797

Smurfy8797

hello, i wanna do a timelapse of the sun coming up and have a few questions.

1.) If i want to make it timlapse ill be filming the sun coming up for say - half hour,
then, in sony vegas you can just hold control and shorten the clip to make it faster,
or expand the clip whilst holding control to put it in slow motion. But there is a point
where it wont shorten anymore because its got to its 'max' i suppose, i want this clip
to be only 10-20 seconds long and i cant see sony vegas being able to compress it
that much. What is a better method for doing fast motion or time lapse? e.g what
would you reccomend i do with the 30 minute footage?

2.) Would i want to set it at 20fps or 30fps? i think that on my camera 720p is 30fps and
1080 is 20fps. which would be better for this (which would make me able to compress
it more on vegas?

Any comments/links/videos appreciated :)

-Callum
 
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Smurfy8797 said:
2.) Would i want to set it at 20fps or 30fps? i think that on my camera 720p is 30fps and
1080 is 20fps. which would be better for this (which would make me able to compress
it more on vegas?
Click to expand...

Neither, unless you are not going to stretch time out very long. You are looking to do interval recording, 1-2 frames every X amount of time, depending on the length of the event, and how much you want to compress time.

Rolling 10 minutes of clouds coming over the horizon to speed it up to look like 10 seconds of footage at 24fps playback is, by way of example, 1 frame every 2.5 seconds, or so. If I am doing the math right. 20 minutes to 10 seconds works out to 1 frame every 5 seconds, etc. It's all variables.

If you are stuck without interval record you might be able to do 1 frame grab per X seconds from however many minutes of video footage, instead of just trying to compress it down. Maybe that it was vegas is doing anyway? Dunno, not an expert in post or Vegas.
 
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Well, an event that is 20 minutes long, is 1200 seconds long. So if you took 1 frame every second you would have 1200 frames, which is about 50 seconds. One frame every half second would give you 2400 frame, or about 100 seconds of footage, and so on. 1 frame every 2 seconds will give you 600 frames, which is around 25 seconds of finished footage.

It's just math bro. ;) Speaking of which, if anyone wants to check mine, that would be great.

The variable is how much you want to compress time. That determines how much time between each frame you shoot (interval duration).
 
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^^ that would be in 24p then? right? so if i was doin it in 24p and wanted it to be 10 seconds long then 24*10 = 240 frames. so then 1200/240= 5. so i should take a picture every 5 seconds for 20 minutes? put it together - 24 frames in a second and i would get 10 seconds footage.

right

so how would i go about taking a picture every 5 seconds? is there something that can do it automatically or do i have to press the shutter every 5 seconds? also what software is good for putting all the pictures together? not really easy to do in sony vegas... because when you import pictures they automatically are 3 second objects and id have to shorten them all one by one and i cant do that so what software is good for PC?
 
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The math looks right.

As far as how to shoot it, unless you can find an interval function on the camera, you're stuck clicking the remote (I wouldn't press the button on the camera, since it causes movement) every 5 seconds.

Not sure on your options in post. Premiere will treat stills the same as Vegas (IIRC). Others with more post knowledge might be able to help. Changing an import setting? Batch processing? Dunno.
 
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******* ****!!!!!!! that was amazing time lapse and it makes me want the 5DMKII so bad!!!

would the time lapse look better in, say, 30p or higher, like 60? what would be better?

in 60p i would take a picture every 2 seconds.
 
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If you're away from city lights, another cool shot would be a sunset that takes it all the way into starlight and you can see the earth rotating as the stars seem to "move" in the heavens.

Hell, you could do a "day in the life of..." for an oil field worker. Bookend it with sunrise and sunset. Put it to cool music, etc.
 
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^^ i dont really understand what you mean :-S but a time lapse of the sunset at the beach here would also be amazing! ill try the sunrise first. and then if it goes well ill do the sunset, and make it the opening and ending to my next short. :)
 
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Smurfy8797 said:
^^ i dont really understand what you mean :-S but a time lapse of the sunset at the beach here would also be amazing! ill try the sunrise first. and then if it goes well ill do the sunset, and make it the opening and ending to my next short. :)
Click to expand...

check out some time lapses on vimeo, utube etc.

there r plenty of the ones he means.

and its a pretty cool effect as well.

EDIT:

nvrmmind. i missed the second page. didnt know u already got ur answer.
 
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