Time-lapse capture with digicams

[Mark R]

Didn't realise it would be practical.

Anyway, I was surprised to find a PC controlled capture application bundled with my new Canon G3, so couldn't resist trying it out.

The most difficult part was converting the several hundred jpeg files into an avi, but I worked out how to do it eventually.

Links: Clouds (2 MB); Clouds (Hi res - 9 MB) [Divx 5.03 or later required - doesn't work with 5.01]

 

[Wallydraigle]

Someone over at DPreview did a Phalaenopsis orchid opening up with their D60. It was really cool. I gave it a shot but decided that it was just one of those things that I suck at and I never really did anything with it. Downloading yours now.

 

[Entity]

Very cool.

Rob

 

[Koing]

downloading now.....

 

[Colt45]

whoa, that's pretty neat

 

[Shawn]

that's very cool. wish my camera did that.

 

[TommyVercetti]

How do you convert all those jpgs to AVI?

 

[Koing]

I get a static image?

Doesn't change. So I may have the wrong codecs then.......

 

[hawkeye81x]

Very cool indeed.

however, lot of the frames from the 2MB version was chunky...

 

[Entity]

How often were those pics taken?

Rob

 

[Hoober]

Wow, really cool.

 

[Anubis]

nice. the camera has a setting that does this automatically??? i mean takes teh pics at a fixed interval?

and how did you convert them into a AVI

 

[toant103]

Originally posted by: Mark R
Didn't realise it would be practical.

Anyway, I was surprised to find a PC controlled capture application bundled with my new Canon G3, so couldn't resist trying it out.

The most difficult part was converting the several hundred jpeg files into an avi, but I worked out how to do it eventually.

Links: <a class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="http://meltedbutter.users.btopenworld.com/clouds.avi" target=blank>Clouds (2 MB)</A>; <a class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="http://meltedbutter.users.btopenworld.com/cloudshi.avi" target=blank>Clouds (Hi res - 9 MB)</A> [Divx 5.03 or later required - doesn't work with 5.01]

nice. i just got my g3 like a couple days ago.


here are some pics.

Text



fish_duck
Text
Text

 

[Sid59]

that time-lapse is cool. Been meaning to do that with my a40 for a bit. Got lazy. Need to setup my laptop.

 

[Eli]

Awesome!!! I can't wait to do this when I get a digicam

 

[fatbaby]

does time lapse work on an s200?

what are the requirements for timelapse?

 

[hollowman]

eerie.

 

[Eli]

Originally posted by: fatbaby
does time lapse work on an s200?

what are the requirements for timelapse?

I wish someone would post some information. I doubt you sit there and press the button every second.

 

[ApacheXMD]

reminds me of the creepy scenes in The Ring

-patchy

 

[BillGates]

Sweet - I wonder if my S230 does that?

 

[Rob9874]

Argh! My WMP at work won't play avi's!!! "No suitable decompressor found." Oh well, I'll wait till I get home.

 

[TommyVercetti]

Originally posted by: Eli

Originally posted by: fatbaby does time lapse work on an s200? what are the requirements for timelapse?

I wish someone would post some information. I doubt you sit there and press the button every second.

I have a canon A40, and it comes with a software which allows you to do that. It's just like an advanced webcam software thing. You connect your camera to the computer, this software recognizes it, and you can set whatever interval you want. What I want to know is how to convert all these pics into an AVI.

 

[SendTrash]

how did you combine the pics into an avi?

 

[amnesiac]

what codec is it? I can't play it.

 

[Mark R]

It seems a lot of people are wondering how I made these movies.

It's not that hard.

Supplied with the camera is Canon Remote capture. Hook the camera up via USB and you can control the camera remotely, and pictures are transferred direct to the PC HD. It has an interval timer function which can be set to anything longer than 5 seconds.

I simply put the camera on my window ledge, and let remote capture run for an hour or so. Unfortuately it won't run for much longer than that due to massive memory leaks - it's not often you see Windows task manager report more than 1800 MB of virtual memory in use.

The resulting jpgs were converted into a avi using 'slide show movie maker' - some freeware thing I found somewhere. It's really, really slow, so I converted the jpegs into an uncompressed avi (about 1 GB in size).

The I used virtualdub to encode the avi into MPEG4. I used XviD (5/4/03 release) to encode, but the avis will play back using DivX 5. Note because of bugs in early versions of DivX, 5.03 or later are required. I've tested 5.03 and 5.05 both work fine. 5.01 and 5.02 don't work.