How to make a timelapse?

Question

I have 238gb of timelapse photos which was taken over a period of twenty days and all the photos are split up into 20 folders. I would like to put this together into a timelapse, I tried using Premiere Pro but that is taking very very long, any tips on putting it together fast btw Im on a Mac, thanks.

Solution

Well, you could use ffmpeg, which is cross platform... Granted it's all command line stuff, @Slhck spelled out how to do it with ffmpeg in his answer here but if you read through the command line options for ffmpeg as well, you'll soon see that you can make a movie at your uncropped resolution of 5185*3456 at 30fps... but I tell ya, that will be one freakin HUGE file. Your choice though.

You could use Open Image Sequence which is included with Quicktime. Again, the files needed to be numbered sequentially. The Quicktime 7 manual. But, you open the Quicktime player, File, Open Image Sequence. Choose the Frame Rate, and Export it as a movie.

EDIT

You can also do it with iMovie. Here's a tutorial on that.. granted it is for iMovie 09, but the general process is the same.

... and here is a list of software (some free, some not) at Macupdate for making stop motion movies.

WAIT-A-MINUTE!!

60,928 images? You want the video to run for 90 seconds? That just hit me. The human eye perceives motion at a minimum of 13 frames per second (any less and we see frames instead of the motion), and movies in the theater display at 24 frames per second. DVDs display at the equivalent of 29.97 frames per second (essentially 30 fps). So, if we assume 30 fps, 90 seconds worth of video is only 2700 images. You want to shoot for 677 frames per second? Seriously?

So, here's my first tip to you. Reduce the number of images you want to work with! you only need 2700 to achieve your 90 seconds, and working with 2700 images will take far less time than 60928. In fact, you probably won't have to change the software you are using. Take every 20th image (technically every 22nd image) and you'd have 2700 images that would span the entire sequence of pictures.

Comments

[slhck]

How many pictures should be shown per second? What's their folder layout like?

[slhck]

You still haven't told us how many pictures there are. We'd need this info to find out the frame rate you want. Also, don't you want the photos to be compressed before? (Also, what version of OS X do you run?)

[slhck]

Finally, what is their native resolution and what should the video be like? 1080p? Are you fine with cropping the pictures? Or do you want borders?

[Dragan Marjanovic]

The image resolution is 5184 * 3456 and I dont want to crop the pictures are I zoomed in so they cant really be cropped and Yes 1080p would be great. =)

[Sylvester]

That will be big file, and it will take a long time. I do a lot of editing, compositing and VFX myself, and it takes hours to render (3 hours for a 3 sec animation once) using a mid-range PC

[NReilingh]

+1 for QuickTime 7. It might require Pro, but it's by far the easiest.

[slhck]

The tutorial misses a few options, I've covered the slideshow thing though: How to turn images into a video slideshow with sound

[Bon Gart]

@OliverSalzburg Are you disagreeing with me, that he should in fact be trying to shoot for 600+ fps? Because it seems that you are being vague here. I mean, sure... shooting for 60fps could look nice, but that's still only using 5400 source images, as opposed to 61k. So, what are you saying , exactly?

[Bon Gart]

@OliverSalzburg I can agree with that. However, he has expressed an issue with the amount of time this project is taking him, and what you propose would increase the amount of time it would take him to make his movie. The main reason why I suggest reducing the number of images is to solve his issue with how long this is taking him.

[Joey]

PAL DVDs use 25 fps. You're NTSC-biased here ;)

[Bon Gart]

@joey you are absolutely correct. Anyone else want to nitpick here instead of being constructive? Come on, no need to hold back.