Go Pro Time Lapse
I didn't want to hijack the "New Toy" thread that Rich has going any more,
so I thought I would give this it's own thread. I set up my GoPro to do time lapse, hoping to get a good video of the recent storm (blizzard), and to learn some more about the camera and the GoPro Studio software that comes with it. I set the camera to take 1 picture every 10 seconds and let it run for a little over 24 hours. I was going to call the video "a day in the life of a blizzard, but after seeing the results, I'm changing it to "24 hours of crap"! The fault is not with the camera, but rather the camera operator. Turns out that a blizzard with a lot of wind, doesn't show a nice slow falling of snow with a very noticeable build up of snow, but rather snow being blown sideways at varying speeds, and the buildup of snow on the bushes being blown off of the bushes and then building back up again and then being blown off and on and on and on. Not what I had in mind at all! The camera was set up to take 7MP pictures with a narrow field of view, and it recorded 7778 jpeg images. That used a little over 21GB worth of a 64GB card. The GoPro will only put up to 999 images in a folder, so I wound up with 10 folders (some having less than 999 images). I am currently using the GoPro Studio software to try to get all of those images into one long video, and the first thing I found out was that I need a new laptop with WAYYYYYY more horsepower than my current one has! It's a SLOOOOOOOOOOW process to work with that many 7MP images. Still on the vertical slope of the learning curve, but I'm getting there. In hindsight I probably should have gone with a time lapse of less than 500 images for a first time go thru. That way my mistakes would not have cost me so much time. I don't believe that I'll be uploading the completed video either, because it's just too boring. The camera worked flawlessly though! :thumbsup: I had it plugged into an AC source and mounted on a tripod, and thought that ALL images (even the ones at night) came out fine. The only light was the street lamp outside our house, and it was in every frame. There doesn't appear to be any lens flare, which is a good thing. The utility lines running down the street have the classic "bent" look that comes with a fisheye lens, but there's a box that can be checked in GoPro Studio that says "Fisheye Reduction" which I chose to leave unchecked. The only other thing that I didn't think about, and which I don't like, is that the snow was blown onto the window during the blizzard, melted on the glass, and shows up in the images. Very distracting, but I guess that's what happens during blizzards. All in all, a fun learning experience that I'll try some more even though the results were a lot less than I had hoped for. Andy :wavey: |
Interesting to know that the GoPro doesn't automatically create a video during timelapse. My Panasonic camcorder does this, so it's really not any work at all creating timelapse that way. What you describe with having to chain together a bunch of individual graphics images in order to create a video doesn't sound like a lot of fun. And yeah, working with this sort of stuff does pretty much require a PC with a significant amount of horsepower. When I generate the videos I do, I am thankful that the program I use takes advantage of the graphics board I have in my PC, as that does make a significant difference right there in generation time.
Sounds like the final video you would get would be a quite large file. I'm not sure YouTube would even accept something so large, as last time I checked there was a limit on filesize. Anyway, I'd be curious to hear how long the 24 hours actually worked out to be with that timelapse file. Live and learn with this stuff. Without a doubt I've had my share of creations that went into the scrap heap when I saw the results I really got. And from the number of views I see on YouTube with all of the stuff I've published there, certainly my own opinion of the quality of my own videos is not shared by very many people. :shrug01: But then again, I believe the trick there is to include a few nude pics of women to get the views count up. |
YEAH, RIGHT............pictures of nude women! :rofl1: As in running around
outside in a New England blizzard. I was able to convert all of the files to 2 .avi files with a combined file size of less than 950 MB. The next step would be to import them into the "storyboard" one at a time, then export the completed storyboard into the final video. But, alas, that's not gonna happen! When I tried to do that, I was unable to follow the steps in the manual. Oh, well, update the software I think! :thumbsup: Went thru the upgrade process, and I still couldn't get it to follow the manual. :thumbsdown: Decided to do a test install on my work laptop, and that install looks different than the one on my laptop. Didn't want to leave it on the work laptop so I uninstalled it. But it looked just like the screenshots in the manual, and the one on my laptop doesn't, so I'm sure it would have worked on the work laptop. Not only do I need more horsepower, but it's obvious I also need more compatibility. LOL So, put this crap to bed until I can scrape up enuf Pesos to score a new laptop that works with it! Andy |
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