{"id":50,"date":"2013-09-23T20:54:10","date_gmt":"2013-09-23T19:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/axotron.se\/blog\/?p=50"},"modified":"2013-10-27T20:57:18","modified_gmt":"2013-10-27T19:57:18","slug":"making-a-time-lapse-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/axotron.se\/blog\/making-a-time-lapse-video\/","title":{"rendered":"Making a time-lapse video"},"content":{"rendered":"

The previous post<\/a> was about building the hardware for a remote release timer, programming it and capturing a (large) number of JPEG files. This post is about going from there to creating a video.<\/p>\n

Making a video<\/h3>\n

So here comes the part that was most difficult for me and where I had to learn a couple of new things. I have hardly worked at all with video before and turned to Google to figure out how I could accomplish some results without buying expensive commercial software. After all, this is just a minor hobby project.<\/p>\n

After some iterations, these are the steps I went through to produce a video:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Crop the images to 16:9 format (and also scale them down to 1920×1080).<\/li>\n
  2. Assemble and code the images into an MPEG 4\/H.264 file at 30 fps.<\/li>\n
  3. Find some suitable free music to use as soundtrack.<\/li>\n
  4. (Edit the music to fit the length of the video.)<\/li>\n
  5. Add some title text before the main video and some more text after it.<\/li>\n
  6. Publish it all on Youtube.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Here is how I did it on a computer running Windows 7:<\/p>\n

    Cropping and rescaling<\/h5>\n

    I had the excellent free (image) viewer Irfanview<\/a> already installed and it turns out that it is the perfect tool for batch cropping and rescaling of photos. I found this tutorial<\/a> that explains how to do it, but basically you just select File -> Batch Conversion\/Rename, add the files you want to crop, click “Advanced batch conversion settings” and set up all the relevant parameters there. See screenshots below.<\/p>\n

    I had to crop from 2144×1424 to 2144×1206 (to get the 16:9 aspect ratio) and then I also let Irfanview rescale to 1920×1080 and place the resulting files in a subdirectory.<\/p>\n

    \"Batch<\/a>
    Batch processing dialog in Irfanview. Select files here and click on Advanced to set up the cropping and scaling.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
    \"Advanced<\/a>
    Advanced batch processing options in Irfanview.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
    Images to video<\/h5>\n

    I found a wonderfully unbloated and straightforward – yet functional – tool to do the conversion from JPEGs to an mp4 video, namely “Images to video<\/a>“. The program needs no installation and has a single window (it can also be used from the command line). Below is a screenshot of it.<\/p>\n

    \"The<\/a>
    The only window in the program “Images to video”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    After setting up this dialog, you just press Convert and after a (relatively short) while, a video file pops out. Since the cropping and scaling was done using Irfanview we do not have to worry about it here, which is good since I could not figure out how the cropping features here worked. As soon as I set any of the crop values to higher than 0, the resulting video file came out empty.<\/p>\n

    Soundtrack<\/h5>\n

    A video is more interesting to view if it has some sound. It turns out that there exists quite a bit of music released under a Creative Commons license. This page<\/a> has a list of links to various sites with royalty free music. I found what I was looking for at incompetech.com<\/a>, where Kevin MacLeod has published a large number of tunes. You just need to credit him appropriately<\/a> if you use the music.<\/p>\n

    Edit the music<\/h5>\n

    You may or may not need to edit the music. If you want to e.g. cut out a part of a tune and have detailed control over fade it in and fade out, Audacity<\/a> seems like a good choice. I used this at first, but the options in Windows Movie Maker (see next section) turned out to be enough for my humble needs at this point.<\/p>\n

    Bringing it all together<\/h5>\n

    To compose a video with a title screen, some information after the actual video and a soundtrack, I used Microsoft’s Movie Maker<\/a> that you can download for free. The program does not give you a lot of control, but it is straightforward to use and was good enough for this project.<\/p>\n

    Putting it on Youtube<\/h5>\n

    This part is very easy. Just create a Youtube account unless you already have one and upload the video.<\/p>\n

    The results<\/h3>\n

    So, what did become of all this? Below are some of the crude results of my efforts as a fledgling time-lapse video creator.<\/p>\n

    Magnetic putty devouring a magnet<\/p>\n